After a decade of being free of the IMF, Pakistan has had to go back for a loan. It has the usual ‘free market’ conditions such as increasing the level and coverage of General Sales Tax, GST (VAT). The World Bank estimates that over $1bn of tax is evaded each year by the rich. Hilary Clinton has criticised them for paying too little tax. The finance minister talks of helping the poor and no one believes him. He has a point when he says that cutting subsidies on the hugely loss making PIA won’t hurt the poor as they never fly but who believes him when he argues that subsidising electricity helps the rich heat their swimming pools? The federal interior minister promises ‘jihad’ on corruption. The ‘Newsline’ magazine questions his credibility, pointing out that ministers, the prime minister, the president himself, all have big houses in London, Swiss bank accounts together with modest official incomes and tax bills.
The Consumer Price Index now stands at 15.48% and rising, it’s more for many basic food items. There are some organised protests about the price of sugar and cooking oil. In Peshawar, twenty five bakers were arrested recently for going on strike. Their demand was that supplies of subsidised flour are restored or they be allowed to increase the price of a roti. A few days later it was reported they were baking again, now producing smaller roti at the regulated price.
The budget deficit is 6% of GDP. Many businesses, large and small and the government are all are short of cash, causing lots of crises such as the cancellation of the national water purification programme and a 50% R 150 billion ($1.5bn) reduction in the development budget. $2bn a year goes to service foreign debts and this will increase with the latest loan from the IMF. There is again a debate on whether to default on debt. ‘Dawn’ has an editorial against default, arguing that it would remove the only discipline there is on an otherwise financially irresponsible government.
The political parties are manoeuvring on the GST vote that is due shortly, trying to avoid the unpopularity that approving the increase will bring. The government coalition appears to be breaking up. Two ministers, for religious affairs and for science, have publicly attacked each other for corrupt dealings over the Haj arrangements, ripping off the thousands of pilgrims from Pakistan who go every year. Eventually Gilani, the prime minister, sacks them both and the small islamist party of the religious affairs minister, JUI-F, leaves the coalition. It doesn’t bring the government down but there are plenty of people who think this is just an elaborate charade to delay putting the IMF conditions through parliament.
Parties accuse each other viciously. The PPP Sindh interior minister, speaking at the Karachi Chamber of Commerce, attacks the MQM, Karachi’s largest party:
“When they want to kill any Pashtun, Sindhi, Punjab or Baloch, they go about executing their plan methodically.”
In the absence of political parties with manifestos for real change, the slogan raised by Zulfiqar Bhutto, founder of the PPP, in Pakistan’s first national election in 1970 ‘roti, kapra aur makan’ – bread, clothing, shelter, remains what people want. It is the total failure to deliver this, together with military occupation that creates the conditions in which the Taliban can recruit.
The chief minister of the Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif, suddenly announces a plan to halve the price of vegetables in three months, using empty state land in parks, schools and colleges. It’s hard to see this as a cheap and even cruel PR stunt, exploiting the misery of the poor.
Not only the corruption but also the arrogance of the elite is boundless. The managing director of PIA, flying from Manchester has the plane he and hundreds of others are on diverted mid flight from Lahore to Karachi, 750 miles distant.
In Lahore, 10,000 gas based plants have had their gas supplies stopped. The gas has been diverted to domestic consumers in other cities in the Punjab, Gujranwala, Sialkot and others because of the strength of local protests. The manufacturers claim that two years ago they predicted a crisis in supplies and proposed investment in equipment to enable liquid natural gas imports. If this has been done then there would now be no crisis.
The papers and giant billboards in the city are carrying a message:
“On behalf of honest and regularly paying customers of Karachi Electricity Supply Company – KESC. Only 20 days left – pay all your outstanding bills and voluntarily report your tampered meters within the next 20 days or face disconnection, public defamation, up to 3 years imprisonment and up to 50 lakhs fines.”
Load shedding (power cuts) is now being imposed more in areas judged to have a higher proportion of non payers. This is in effect collective punishment. In some poorer areas, effectively no one pays their bills. They are judged too dangerous for the meter readers to work in. There are other areas where payment approaches 100%.
Just 2% of GDP is spent on education (in Britain it is 6%). Where parents can afford it, they pay for private education. Much of the education budget is stolen or wasted. There a ghost teachers who don’t exist, though someone collects their salary, village schools which are empty or used as warehouses by local landlords. Students and lecturers in Lahore are protesting the appointment of 20 boards of governors who will take over if and when the government hands over control. This is part of the on going privatisation drive that for twenty years has been pushed by the IMF and World Bank.
Welfare is being cut. The Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) which gives 1000 rupees a month to each family is being cut back from R70bn in 2009 to R50bn. To do the job properly would require R150bn. This in a country where 75% of the population are living on less than £2 a day. In 2003 unemployment was under 8%. Now it is over 15%.
There is violence, mainly targeted killings between the parties and between gangs and sometimes both. The most recent large bomb in Karachi targeted a CID building, notorious for using torture in its interrogations. Interestingly, the attackers spent some time before detonating a huge bomb, firing in such a way as to clear the area. No one was killed at this point. The city isn’t shutting down as it did when there were bombs put in mosques. The government and the state bureaucracy have surrounded all their buildings with walls and concrete blocks. Not knowing who he can trust, Zardari, the president, leaves his palace as rarely as possible.
Nevertheless, there is enormous tension in the run up to the 9th and 10th day of Muharram, the days of the Shia processions, security is everywhere. Exactly a year ago a bomb exploded on a procession in Karachi, killing 25.
It is becoming clearer and clearer that the super flood was a man made disaster, not a natural one. Not just a chronic failure to maintain the system properly together with building on floodplains, deforestation but the most hideous crimes carried out by big landowners, as in the case of the breach at Tori Bund:
‘The mysterious breach on the right bank of the Indus on 7 August at Tori Bund. The accused include Kursheed Ahmed Shah, federal minister of Labour and Manpower. Others accused include senior military personnel. The breach led to floods causing 50 deaths and the displacement of half a million people’
Sunday, 2 January 2011
Muharram
Today is the 9th day of Muharram, sacred for the Shias. A public holiday today and tomorrow, the 10th and final day. Both see huge processions of Shias and there is enormous tension because a year ago a bomb attack on a march killed 25. There are 20,000 police on duty, there are black flags everywhere.
A day for staying in PILER, catching up with emails, reading more of Karachiwala and writing up this diary.
Friday 17 December
10th day of Muharram. After breakfast, a walk. It’s like Christmas Day with sunshine: the roads are clear, people are slowly surfacing, boys are beginning to play cricket. I speak to Shahid Husain, experienced Karachi journalist, to apologise I’ve leaving before we’ve been able to meet and he immediately arranges to come over after lunch. He tells me of a travelogue he’s written after a recent visit to the US, a conference of 4,000 US Pakistani doctors in Dallas, the older ones all accusing each other of what they did and didn’t do forty years ago and the shocking poverty, more and more people queuing for food. This, he says, has direct parallels here in Karachi.
I report my meeting with Faiz Ghangro whom he knows. He accepts the argument that Chief Justice Choudery represents that section in the ruling class that see the urgent need to put limits on the corruption but points out that the CJ has a blind spot when it comes to the media. The journalists have a long running case of a national wage award which has been denied them. He could sort this out but won’t for fear of upsetting the media moguls. Sounds familiar.
We talk about Obama’s speech on slow progress in Afghanistan and whether the people advising him are stupid or dishonest - we agree on the latter. And the criticisms of Pakistan for not doing enough to root out the Taliban just don’t get how Pakistan’s army, the people who really run the country, have seen India as the enemy ever since they were children. That means that Afghanistan must be an ally and, given any possibility the Taliban could in future be Afghanistan’s government, it follows that no matter how much military aid the US gives to Pakistan – over $1bn a year currently – links with the Taliban have to be maintained.
Shahid has written an article on climate change and Pakistan . I invite him to come and do a meeting about it in Manchester if he manages to fulfill his plan to come to England.
A real red sunset at 5.30, the first I’ve seen. Now back to finish off the diary before a couple of hours sleep and then to the airport.
A day for staying in PILER, catching up with emails, reading more of Karachiwala and writing up this diary.
Friday 17 December
10th day of Muharram. After breakfast, a walk. It’s like Christmas Day with sunshine: the roads are clear, people are slowly surfacing, boys are beginning to play cricket. I speak to Shahid Husain, experienced Karachi journalist, to apologise I’ve leaving before we’ve been able to meet and he immediately arranges to come over after lunch. He tells me of a travelogue he’s written after a recent visit to the US, a conference of 4,000 US Pakistani doctors in Dallas, the older ones all accusing each other of what they did and didn’t do forty years ago and the shocking poverty, more and more people queuing for food. This, he says, has direct parallels here in Karachi.
I report my meeting with Faiz Ghangro whom he knows. He accepts the argument that Chief Justice Choudery represents that section in the ruling class that see the urgent need to put limits on the corruption but points out that the CJ has a blind spot when it comes to the media. The journalists have a long running case of a national wage award which has been denied them. He could sort this out but won’t for fear of upsetting the media moguls. Sounds familiar.
We talk about Obama’s speech on slow progress in Afghanistan and whether the people advising him are stupid or dishonest - we agree on the latter. And the criticisms of Pakistan for not doing enough to root out the Taliban just don’t get how Pakistan’s army, the people who really run the country, have seen India as the enemy ever since they were children. That means that Afghanistan must be an ally and, given any possibility the Taliban could in future be Afghanistan’s government, it follows that no matter how much military aid the US gives to Pakistan – over $1bn a year currently – links with the Taliban have to be maintained.
Shahid has written an article on climate change and Pakistan . I invite him to come and do a meeting about it in Manchester if he manages to fulfill his plan to come to England.
A real red sunset at 5.30, the first I’ve seen. Now back to finish off the diary before a couple of hours sleep and then to the airport.
PILER round table on the flood
Wednesday 15 December
I’m invited to take part in a round table on strategy. A Dutch NGO, ICCO, leads off with a report on the flood.
This is followed by Pervez Tahir, economist, Muhammad Ali Shah, chair of Pakistan Fisherfolk (PFF), and Ercelawn from PILER. The three together provide a devastating analysis of the Pakistani state and the impossibility of reform. What follows is a brief summary of my notes
Pervez Tahir
The July super flood created the conditions for a serious government to introduce emergency taxation. This remains a proposal, a lost opportunity. Today the media make no reference to the floods apart from a few specials programmes. The talk is of rehabilitation even though large numbers still need emergency relief. The government talks giving a lead in rehabilitation by creating model villages. How much impact can this have when there are 1.8 million households without shelter? The model villages will in any case almost certainly fail.
Many families have rebuilt their own shelters. Now they need to rebuild their lives. They cannot rebuild schools without aid. There is the question of the condition of the soil which will often not be suitable for planting a new crop.
Most Western governments are reducing their development budgets; there is a conservative wave throughout the Western world. Reconstruction is expensive. Nevertheless the government must make a plan. With the 2005 earthquake a reconstruction agency was established. With the floods there has only been rescue and relief. The Flood Control Commission exists but there has been under funding of irrigation systems for a long time. And there is a constitutional issue. With the [new] 18th amendment, the provinces have the power to act but are not ready for this power. The National Financial commission award reverses the financial flow towards the provinces which now have the bigger share of state funds including the social sector, an increase in funds of 58%. In the past federal government did the big projects. Now provinces are free to negotiate loans and raise money in the international money markets. Do they have the capacity? Provinces have always demanded maximum political autonomy. Now they have it they are reluctant to pick up the liabilities. They only want the assets.
There is the continuing question n whether the government will survive. Two ministers have just been sacked just before the crucial vote on the extension of the general sales tax.
Floods are not new in Pakistan. Why do we feel powerless? Encroachments hinder water flow. The powerful have taken a lot of land for housing, for mangoes, that should have been left.
There is the problem that irrigation departments have not done much work for a long time. Take for example the problem with the Sukkar barrage gates. The provincial department has the capacity to deal with this. The decision was taken, however, that to would be done by the army. If the provincial capacity is not used, it deteriorates while the military industrial complex grows.
Matters have been made much worse because there was no system of local government when the flood happened. Union councils used to be close to the people. Instead we have ad hoc appointed district officers. The experience of the union councillors was lost. The provinces are unprepared, uncertain what to do, unable to take charge as they should, given the 18th amendment.
Muhammad Ali Shah,
Nothing was worse than the flood. Floods have become worse since the dams were built. Encroachment and deforestation have contributed as has global warming and climate change. This was not a natural but a man-made disaster with 1.7 million houses destroyed in Sindh and a huge loss of livestock and crops. 90% of those affected are small farmers and landless labourers... The IDPs in camps are not the full picture as many are living with relatives... There are many health hazards; drinking water is the biggest hazard. 2.5 million acres of crops were badly affected. Much of it is still under 3 or 4ft of water. It’s impossible to have a rabi (winter) crop. Many IDPs cannot return home because they can’t survive there. Governments subcontracting aid through different agencies – one for food, another for non-food -as well as aid that doesn’t relate to traditional culture, means there is no security of daily food supply and non-food aid is often sold. There are problems with only one family member receiving money and then the problems with the WATAN [ATM] cards that often do not work. The National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) is hugely corrupt as are the provincial DMAs whose members often are not up to the job. We need an alternative. We need to control the disaster naturally. We have to abolish capitalism and feudalism. 20 million affected, we need debt cancellation and proper distribution of resources. We need proper plans for disaster management, an autonomous authority involving civil society representatives, those working on the ground. The state should play its role. If not, civil society has to launch a campaign to pressure them to act, to cut defence expenditures
Aly Ercelawn
From the experience of mobilisation and service delivery aiming to reduce vulnerability and provide assets such as clean water, there is a problem of social ideology, no collective responsibility, for example for children. Household based arrangements are not the best way. Looking at this as moral issues not cost effectiveness. In a village near Thatta, looking ideal fro collective action, we brought a gravity system, originally Australian. Sourced by muddy river water, capable of 300 litres an hour, 3000 litres a day, sufficient for drinking, washing cooking utensils and at least washing the children whose bodies are covered with sores because of the water.
But women are reluctant to climb up the tank to put in the water. The men are earning 200 rupees a day fishing or on construction work. People are drinking it but not using it for anything else... They aren’t willing to pay for a small pump. We shouldn’t do anything that isn’t sustainable. There is opportunity for innovation such as the treadle pump from Africa.
What is our argument? Are we about rights? Or entitlements? Service delivery? Or mobilisation? Finally, can we be planning for the next flood or cyclone? What is our position on state assets? Are we being charity organisations implying that part of the state perceives poverty as a natural phenomenon? Most of government is very economistic with little time to look at the ecological framework.
And from the discussion that followed,
In Swat, an hundred year old, decrepit, unused bridge, partially survived the flood. There were sixty newer bridges upstream. Of which not one survived. This raises the question, in this case in the reconstruction, ‘What is the state? What should the state do?’ There are examples of parent teacher associations where there sufficient funds to rebuild the school but it isn’t done. Not for a lack of resources but for a lack of will. Civil administration is not functional. Without democracy … When you have such a disaster, you have to operate on a huge scale. Diversity is needed.
Muhammed Ali Shah added: in the rehabilitation phase to have to make a plan for challenging the state. Change in policy is needed. Focus on mass change, not only disaggregated efforts, a need for holistic restoration. We forget the media. We have to widen our concept of civil society.
Ercelawn: we need mobilisation on a political basis as we find solutions that avoid the bullying…
After lunch I disappear to the city, for presents, shawls and sweets, back at 5pm, just in time for everyone to join in eating Anees’s cake, together with samosa and jelabi and an unrehearsed rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’.
Later, Ercelawn suggests meeting with Iftikar, another sharp and critical soul. A beer at Ercelawn’s flat in town and then to Iftikar’s. Before setting off, I talk with Issat, the driver. He’s a Pashtun and learnt English working in Malaysia. He introduces me to a fellow Pashtun from Swat, where two years ago a deal was done and the local Taliban took over. After a few months and sharp criticism from Hilary Clinton, the military occupied Swat causing two million to flee. Most have now returned. ‘We want the military to leave’ he says. Meanwhile he’s working in Karachi sending money back to his family.
Traveling home at midnight, Issat tells how just recently his eight month old son was very ill but could go to an excellent local hospital because his job at PILER gave his family health insurance.
I’m invited to take part in a round table on strategy. A Dutch NGO, ICCO, leads off with a report on the flood.
This is followed by Pervez Tahir, economist, Muhammad Ali Shah, chair of Pakistan Fisherfolk (PFF), and Ercelawn from PILER. The three together provide a devastating analysis of the Pakistani state and the impossibility of reform. What follows is a brief summary of my notes
Pervez Tahir
The July super flood created the conditions for a serious government to introduce emergency taxation. This remains a proposal, a lost opportunity. Today the media make no reference to the floods apart from a few specials programmes. The talk is of rehabilitation even though large numbers still need emergency relief. The government talks giving a lead in rehabilitation by creating model villages. How much impact can this have when there are 1.8 million households without shelter? The model villages will in any case almost certainly fail.
Many families have rebuilt their own shelters. Now they need to rebuild their lives. They cannot rebuild schools without aid. There is the question of the condition of the soil which will often not be suitable for planting a new crop.
Most Western governments are reducing their development budgets; there is a conservative wave throughout the Western world. Reconstruction is expensive. Nevertheless the government must make a plan. With the 2005 earthquake a reconstruction agency was established. With the floods there has only been rescue and relief. The Flood Control Commission exists but there has been under funding of irrigation systems for a long time. And there is a constitutional issue. With the [new] 18th amendment, the provinces have the power to act but are not ready for this power. The National Financial commission award reverses the financial flow towards the provinces which now have the bigger share of state funds including the social sector, an increase in funds of 58%. In the past federal government did the big projects. Now provinces are free to negotiate loans and raise money in the international money markets. Do they have the capacity? Provinces have always demanded maximum political autonomy. Now they have it they are reluctant to pick up the liabilities. They only want the assets.
There is the continuing question n whether the government will survive. Two ministers have just been sacked just before the crucial vote on the extension of the general sales tax.
Floods are not new in Pakistan. Why do we feel powerless? Encroachments hinder water flow. The powerful have taken a lot of land for housing, for mangoes, that should have been left.
There is the problem that irrigation departments have not done much work for a long time. Take for example the problem with the Sukkar barrage gates. The provincial department has the capacity to deal with this. The decision was taken, however, that to would be done by the army. If the provincial capacity is not used, it deteriorates while the military industrial complex grows.
Matters have been made much worse because there was no system of local government when the flood happened. Union councils used to be close to the people. Instead we have ad hoc appointed district officers. The experience of the union councillors was lost. The provinces are unprepared, uncertain what to do, unable to take charge as they should, given the 18th amendment.
Muhammad Ali Shah,
Nothing was worse than the flood. Floods have become worse since the dams were built. Encroachment and deforestation have contributed as has global warming and climate change. This was not a natural but a man-made disaster with 1.7 million houses destroyed in Sindh and a huge loss of livestock and crops. 90% of those affected are small farmers and landless labourers... The IDPs in camps are not the full picture as many are living with relatives... There are many health hazards; drinking water is the biggest hazard. 2.5 million acres of crops were badly affected. Much of it is still under 3 or 4ft of water. It’s impossible to have a rabi (winter) crop. Many IDPs cannot return home because they can’t survive there. Governments subcontracting aid through different agencies – one for food, another for non-food -as well as aid that doesn’t relate to traditional culture, means there is no security of daily food supply and non-food aid is often sold. There are problems with only one family member receiving money and then the problems with the WATAN [ATM] cards that often do not work. The National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) is hugely corrupt as are the provincial DMAs whose members often are not up to the job. We need an alternative. We need to control the disaster naturally. We have to abolish capitalism and feudalism. 20 million affected, we need debt cancellation and proper distribution of resources. We need proper plans for disaster management, an autonomous authority involving civil society representatives, those working on the ground. The state should play its role. If not, civil society has to launch a campaign to pressure them to act, to cut defence expenditures
Aly Ercelawn
From the experience of mobilisation and service delivery aiming to reduce vulnerability and provide assets such as clean water, there is a problem of social ideology, no collective responsibility, for example for children. Household based arrangements are not the best way. Looking at this as moral issues not cost effectiveness. In a village near Thatta, looking ideal fro collective action, we brought a gravity system, originally Australian. Sourced by muddy river water, capable of 300 litres an hour, 3000 litres a day, sufficient for drinking, washing cooking utensils and at least washing the children whose bodies are covered with sores because of the water.
But women are reluctant to climb up the tank to put in the water. The men are earning 200 rupees a day fishing or on construction work. People are drinking it but not using it for anything else... They aren’t willing to pay for a small pump. We shouldn’t do anything that isn’t sustainable. There is opportunity for innovation such as the treadle pump from Africa.
What is our argument? Are we about rights? Or entitlements? Service delivery? Or mobilisation? Finally, can we be planning for the next flood or cyclone? What is our position on state assets? Are we being charity organisations implying that part of the state perceives poverty as a natural phenomenon? Most of government is very economistic with little time to look at the ecological framework.
And from the discussion that followed,
In Swat, an hundred year old, decrepit, unused bridge, partially survived the flood. There were sixty newer bridges upstream. Of which not one survived. This raises the question, in this case in the reconstruction, ‘What is the state? What should the state do?’ There are examples of parent teacher associations where there sufficient funds to rebuild the school but it isn’t done. Not for a lack of resources but for a lack of will. Civil administration is not functional. Without democracy … When you have such a disaster, you have to operate on a huge scale. Diversity is needed.
Muhammed Ali Shah added: in the rehabilitation phase to have to make a plan for challenging the state. Change in policy is needed. Focus on mass change, not only disaggregated efforts, a need for holistic restoration. We forget the media. We have to widen our concept of civil society.
Ercelawn: we need mobilisation on a political basis as we find solutions that avoid the bullying…
After lunch I disappear to the city, for presents, shawls and sweets, back at 5pm, just in time for everyone to join in eating Anees’s cake, together with samosa and jelabi and an unrehearsed rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’.
Later, Ercelawn suggests meeting with Iftikar, another sharp and critical soul. A beer at Ercelawn’s flat in town and then to Iftikar’s. Before setting off, I talk with Issat, the driver. He’s a Pashtun and learnt English working in Malaysia. He introduces me to a fellow Pashtun from Swat, where two years ago a deal was done and the local Taliban took over. After a few months and sharp criticism from Hilary Clinton, the military occupied Swat causing two million to flee. Most have now returned. ‘We want the military to leave’ he says. Meanwhile he’s working in Karachi sending money back to his family.
Traveling home at midnight, Issat tells how just recently his eight month old son was very ill but could go to an excellent local hospital because his job at PILER gave his family health insurance.
An evening with Faiz and Fazl, lawyer and politics professor
Tuesday 14 December
Teaching done, just a report to write. Taking an early morning stroll, I talk to Anees, supervising a new bungalow being built at the back of PILER. He’s the building contractor who built PILER ten years ago. I sing the praises of this wonderful building. For some reason I cannot fathom, he asks me what kind of cake I like. ‘Coffee’ I reply.
6.00pm, Jamil drops me at the Jang Building where I wait for Riaz. We walk across the road into Faiz Ghangro’s office, two smallish rooms, wall to wall, floor to ceiling, ever inch packed with traditionally bound law reports, his desk piled high with briefs. A trade unionist in the cement industry in the 1970s, a communist in and out of prison, Faiz is now a labour lawyer, chain smoking as he explains why he’s cheerful: the judiciary have changed, really changed. Since the lawyers’ movement of 2008/2009, justice has been cleaned up, 15-20% of the judges have been ‘retired’, and cases that were stalled for years, even decades, are now being settled. The judges and the court staff have had their pay doubled, they at work beyond 5pm, not leaving at 2pm. Faiz has just won a case for a woman against her employer, KLM. Even more amazing, she’s already been paid her full compensation, 45 lakh rupees, over £30,000 with no one taking a ‘commission’. Faiz proudly shows me a photocopy of the cheque. The MQM, who have dominated the city for more than twenty years , and have 600 or more ‘placemen’, unqualified lawyers, who block vote for MQM in elections to the Sindh Bar Council have lost control by a margin of several hundred votes for the posts of president and general secretary.
The law is still inadequate. A lawful strike can only take place after arbitration which can take months and months. And even when a case is won, implementation can take forever.
Now a drive across the city to Fazl, a professor of politics, in his forties, a Marxist, a Pashtun from Quetta. Picking his words with care, he’s scornful of leftist rhetoric which gives ‘socialism’ as the answer to every problem. He explains the history of Pashtun nationalism (and the differences with Baloch nationalism) and the hopes of the national intelligentsia as they see the potential of the mineral wealth of the region, hoping to emulate the model of the Gulf States, a good life for all citizens (with migrants excluded from the welfare system or political rights.) I suggest that far more probable is the Congo model, small enclaves controlled by foreign capital which extract the wealth leaving nothing for local people. Fazl agrees, pointing out this is already happening, for example, with the Sui gas field in Balochistan, which supplies all the cities of Pakistan but does nothing for the local inhabitants
Then Fazl explains that his daughter very much wants to meet us. Her trophies for winning debating contests are on the wall and as she speaks clearly and forcefully, it’s not hard to see why. She’s doing a BSc in microbiology and wants to go on to a PhD in clinical virology. Unless, that is she passes the civil service exams. Her father chuckles at this point, the two careers could hardly be more different. She wants to talk politics and we vigorously discuss the causes of terrorism, continuing with hardly a break when the power is cut and various torches are found. I carefully explain that I don’t think Pakistan should exist and she’s somewhat shocked while her father laughs.
Nearing midnight, we refuse the offer of supper – we’ve been offered generous bowls of pistachio and almonds – and depart, stopping briefly to eat some spit roasted chicken at a Baloch roadside restaurant, rather more than we can eat at this time of night. As we get up to leave, a young girl who has been watching us walks to our table and puts the remaining chicken onto the naan. The waiter moves to shoo her and stops as he sees me watching. She smiles and departs.
Teaching done, just a report to write. Taking an early morning stroll, I talk to Anees, supervising a new bungalow being built at the back of PILER. He’s the building contractor who built PILER ten years ago. I sing the praises of this wonderful building. For some reason I cannot fathom, he asks me what kind of cake I like. ‘Coffee’ I reply.
6.00pm, Jamil drops me at the Jang Building where I wait for Riaz. We walk across the road into Faiz Ghangro’s office, two smallish rooms, wall to wall, floor to ceiling, ever inch packed with traditionally bound law reports, his desk piled high with briefs. A trade unionist in the cement industry in the 1970s, a communist in and out of prison, Faiz is now a labour lawyer, chain smoking as he explains why he’s cheerful: the judiciary have changed, really changed. Since the lawyers’ movement of 2008/2009, justice has been cleaned up, 15-20% of the judges have been ‘retired’, and cases that were stalled for years, even decades, are now being settled. The judges and the court staff have had their pay doubled, they at work beyond 5pm, not leaving at 2pm. Faiz has just won a case for a woman against her employer, KLM. Even more amazing, she’s already been paid her full compensation, 45 lakh rupees, over £30,000 with no one taking a ‘commission’. Faiz proudly shows me a photocopy of the cheque. The MQM, who have dominated the city for more than twenty years , and have 600 or more ‘placemen’, unqualified lawyers, who block vote for MQM in elections to the Sindh Bar Council have lost control by a margin of several hundred votes for the posts of president and general secretary.
The law is still inadequate. A lawful strike can only take place after arbitration which can take months and months. And even when a case is won, implementation can take forever.
Now a drive across the city to Fazl, a professor of politics, in his forties, a Marxist, a Pashtun from Quetta. Picking his words with care, he’s scornful of leftist rhetoric which gives ‘socialism’ as the answer to every problem. He explains the history of Pashtun nationalism (and the differences with Baloch nationalism) and the hopes of the national intelligentsia as they see the potential of the mineral wealth of the region, hoping to emulate the model of the Gulf States, a good life for all citizens (with migrants excluded from the welfare system or political rights.) I suggest that far more probable is the Congo model, small enclaves controlled by foreign capital which extract the wealth leaving nothing for local people. Fazl agrees, pointing out this is already happening, for example, with the Sui gas field in Balochistan, which supplies all the cities of Pakistan but does nothing for the local inhabitants
Then Fazl explains that his daughter very much wants to meet us. Her trophies for winning debating contests are on the wall and as she speaks clearly and forcefully, it’s not hard to see why. She’s doing a BSc in microbiology and wants to go on to a PhD in clinical virology. Unless, that is she passes the civil service exams. Her father chuckles at this point, the two careers could hardly be more different. She wants to talk politics and we vigorously discuss the causes of terrorism, continuing with hardly a break when the power is cut and various torches are found. I carefully explain that I don’t think Pakistan should exist and she’s somewhat shocked while her father laughs.
Nearing midnight, we refuse the offer of supper – we’ve been offered generous bowls of pistachio and almonds – and depart, stopping briefly to eat some spit roasted chicken at a Baloch roadside restaurant, rather more than we can eat at this time of night. As we get up to leave, a young girl who has been watching us walks to our table and puts the remaining chicken onto the naan. The waiter moves to shoo her and stops as he sees me watching. She smiles and departs.
Karachi activist course and IS meeting
Sunday 12 December
Today was day one of a course for new activists. Twenty five, mainly young women textile workers, working 16 hour days, made to work seven days, not paid the minimum wage. They are extremely nervous at the start and then got going.
This evening we have the IS branch meeting, seven comrades plus me. Sartaj does a short talk about Wikileaks, which is followed by trying to work out how to increase sales. Selling papers at the bigger universities risks getting beaten up by one of the Islamist student groups, there are no places where people meet regularly for meetings or musical events. Asgar comes with a box of Indian sweets to celebrate a successful interview making him permanent in his job in the Federal Urdu Uni.
After the meeting, Riaz and Sartaj and I go out to eat. The large but less than totally salubrious restaurant we eat at is packed with lots of young male professionals. We get a table surprisingly quickly; Riaz reckons the 'gora' (me, the white person) gets special treatment. We discuss being careful about what we eat. The main hazards come from water, not food and Sartaj gives me the old Pashto proverb ‘Don’t be afraid of what you eat; be afraid of what eats you.’ After the meal, we have a paan. Two inches across, carefully wrapped, it’s a folded leaf filled with aniseed, bits of nuts and much else, to be taken whole and slowly chewed. A kind of ‘digestif’ to be taken at the end of the meal. They used to smuggle the leaves in from India, now it’s legal. As Riaz goes to the paan stall, I watch a policeman stagger past. ‘He’s drunk’, Sartaj points out. In Karachi, all policemen are drunk after six o’clock.
Monday 13 December
The course finishes well. Shuja, back from a prison in Karachi where he’s assisted with the release of a dozen Indian fishermen, puts pictures up on the web:
1st day: http://picasaweb.google.com/piler.pakistan/Geoff_KHIWS_Day1?feat=directlink
2nd day: http://picasaweb.google.com/piler.pakistan/Geoff_KHI_Training_Day2?feat=directlink
Today was day one of a course for new activists. Twenty five, mainly young women textile workers, working 16 hour days, made to work seven days, not paid the minimum wage. They are extremely nervous at the start and then got going.
This evening we have the IS branch meeting, seven comrades plus me. Sartaj does a short talk about Wikileaks, which is followed by trying to work out how to increase sales. Selling papers at the bigger universities risks getting beaten up by one of the Islamist student groups, there are no places where people meet regularly for meetings or musical events. Asgar comes with a box of Indian sweets to celebrate a successful interview making him permanent in his job in the Federal Urdu Uni.
After the meeting, Riaz and Sartaj and I go out to eat. The large but less than totally salubrious restaurant we eat at is packed with lots of young male professionals. We get a table surprisingly quickly; Riaz reckons the 'gora' (me, the white person) gets special treatment. We discuss being careful about what we eat. The main hazards come from water, not food and Sartaj gives me the old Pashto proverb ‘Don’t be afraid of what you eat; be afraid of what eats you.’ After the meal, we have a paan. Two inches across, carefully wrapped, it’s a folded leaf filled with aniseed, bits of nuts and much else, to be taken whole and slowly chewed. A kind of ‘digestif’ to be taken at the end of the meal. They used to smuggle the leaves in from India, now it’s legal. As Riaz goes to the paan stall, I watch a policeman stagger past. ‘He’s drunk’, Sartaj points out. In Karachi, all policemen are drunk after six o’clock.
Monday 13 December
The course finishes well. Shuja, back from a prison in Karachi where he’s assisted with the release of a dozen Indian fishermen, puts pictures up on the web:
1st day: http://picasaweb.google.com/piler.pakistan/Geoff_KHIWS_Day1?feat=directlink
2nd day: http://picasaweb.google.com/piler.pakistan/Geoff_KHI_Training_Day2?feat=directlink
Rising tide and meals with Sharafat and PILER colleagues
Saturday 11 December
I come to Riaz's on Friday night and in the morning we go to the impressive, nineteenth century, red sand stone Mohatta Palace - not huge - where there is a new exhibition of modern art called ‘The Rising Tide’. We are twenty minutes early to get into the exhibition, so off somewhere for a cup of tea. We are in Old Clifton, perhaps the poshest part of the city, near the sea. But behind the large expensive sea front buildings, are poor side streets where amidst everything, a tea house is not too hard to find. As we sit, Riaz points out a drug addict shuffling past, bedraggled and ill. There are now 600,000 according to Al Jazeera, ever since the Afghan War in the 1980s brought heroin and Kalashnikovs to the city; this is the first time I’ve knowingly seen one. Going back to the car, Riaz stops to talk to a man waiting in a car opposite who’s staring at us. He’s worried for my safety in such a dangerous place. I tell him I’m very well looked after and thank him for his concern. He’s a doctor working in this area, a former katchi abadi, an illegal slum which at some point ten or twenty years ago was recognised by the city. People started investing and now it’s a mix of good, bad and awful buildings. Very mixed, every ethnicity, it’s full of traders, next to Riaz’s car, there’s a small wagon loaded with cooking oil, a favourite for hoarding as prices are going up all the time.
Into the palace and at first I’m put off by the ‘Pseuds Corner’ language of the introduction but I now think that that was just to keep the sponsors happy. It’s quite the most subversive exhibition I've seen. Subtle, so as not to provoke the military or the Islamists, but anti military, anti mullah, anti bank and anti big business. Paintings, sculpture etc, all of a very high standard. One picture above, a couple more at http://picasaweb.google.com/geoff.brown/TheRisingTide#
Then to lunch with Sharafat, Karamat's younger brother. On the way we pass the Three Swords monument out up by Bhutto with the slogans Unity, Faith and Discipline". The islamist dictator Zia ul Haq who overthrows Bhutto and executes him, adorns the swords with praise and glory to Allah. Now Zardari has covered up Zia’s additions with giant ajraks, the Sindhi national shawl, now looking weather worn. Lunch is dominated by his five year old granddaughter, Shakina, an assertive young woman speaking excellent English.
The day ends with a meal back in Clifton with a group of PILER staff. On the way there, Shuja explains the flood relief work he and PILER colleagues have been doing for the last few months. Much of it has been supporting the people in the camps on the outskirts of Karachi with crises such as a young woman in the final stages of pregnancy urgently needing four pints of a rare blood group. Against the odds, they finally were able to get it, mother and child are both now OK. There will be a huge battle if the government falls and the city bureaucrats get a free hand to evict the 10,000 living in the Labour Colony across the road from PILER.
Back to Karachi and a talk on workers and neo-liberalism
Wednesday 8 December, Haripur to Karachi
The last day here goes fine. The small NGO who’ve organised everything, SAHARA, show me some quite good documentaries they’ve made about their work (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR2Q79iT96g). There is only one woman working for them and she wears a niqab, but in places like Haripur it is going to be tricky getting men and women working together. They promise that they will be organising courses for women.
It is gone ten when I got back to PILER, plane late plus roadside security checks, to find I’m invited to supper with Karamat. There, as seems to happen often with Karamat, were a couple of interesting new faces. Both are Baloch, around my age, from families of tribal leaders, one an ex senator, the other a current senator (as in the US, the Pakistani senate has 100 senators). The current senator argues that religious people were always reactionary and I found myself with Karamat putting a Marxist response – the heart of a heartless world, the sigh of the oppressed.
Thursday 9 December, Karachi
A quiet morning and then the lecture on ‘The international labour movement and the crisis of neo-liberalism’. It goes fine with lots of people asking questions a good sign, especially with those less confident in English. Trying to argue that we are all part of a global battle comes up against the general disbelief here that people in the “West” or “Global North” are suffering. I use Laura’s example of the homeless in New York keeping warm in the railway stations with their suitcases and I think it made some impact. At the same time people here are watching what’s happening abroad e.g. the students in Britain.
Shujauddin, a senior PILER colleague, uploads photos.
http://picasaweb.google.com/piler.pakistan/GeoffBrown?feat=directlink
The last day here goes fine. The small NGO who’ve organised everything, SAHARA, show me some quite good documentaries they’ve made about their work (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR2Q79iT96g). There is only one woman working for them and she wears a niqab, but in places like Haripur it is going to be tricky getting men and women working together. They promise that they will be organising courses for women.
It is gone ten when I got back to PILER, plane late plus roadside security checks, to find I’m invited to supper with Karamat. There, as seems to happen often with Karamat, were a couple of interesting new faces. Both are Baloch, around my age, from families of tribal leaders, one an ex senator, the other a current senator (as in the US, the Pakistani senate has 100 senators). The current senator argues that religious people were always reactionary and I found myself with Karamat putting a Marxist response – the heart of a heartless world, the sigh of the oppressed.
Thursday 9 December, Karachi
A quiet morning and then the lecture on ‘The international labour movement and the crisis of neo-liberalism’. It goes fine with lots of people asking questions a good sign, especially with those less confident in English. Trying to argue that we are all part of a global battle comes up against the general disbelief here that people in the “West” or “Global North” are suffering. I use Laura’s example of the homeless in New York keeping warm in the railway stations with their suitcases and I think it made some impact. At the same time people here are watching what’s happening abroad e.g. the students in Britain.
Shujauddin, a senior PILER colleague, uploads photos.
http://picasaweb.google.com/piler.pakistan/GeoffBrown?feat=directlink
To Haripur and teaching trade unionists
Monday 6 December, Multan to Haripur via Islamabad
The plane is late. I chat with a mobile phone company sales exec. Nowhere are call rates lower than in Pakistan with fierce competition for market share. 100 million phones in a population of 170 million. Even the poorest communities use them. The bonded labourers use them to organise. After a couple of hours, my companion gives up waiting and goes back to his office.
It’s a couple of hours drive from the airport to Haripur in what used to be North West Frontier Province, NWFP, and now is Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa, KPK. It’s a middle sized industrial town, a few hundred thousand, swollen with a hundred and fifty thousand Afghan refugees on the Grand Trunk Road that runs from Calcutta to Kabul. Though the city looks gerry built - the parallel with Manchester in 1844 holds good with mess everywhere – it hasn't got the dust of Multan and Karachi.
Tuesday 7 December, Haripur
The course is hard work with a group of 25, all sitting on cushions round a room that is just large enough, mostly experienced trade unionists, a good mix of factory workers, e.g. textiles and cooking oil and office workers and also the secretary of the rickshaw drivers union. On the second day, we start the course with a little recruitment activity in which people take turns to try to recruit each other and they thoroughly enjoy it. I was afraid that, as older activists, they wouldn't want to do this sort of thing but I was quite wrong. We are working in the Labour Resource Centre with a local NGO. The activists are on the left and, of course, doing far too much. Yesterday evening they arrived having driven from a flood devastated area where they are working on a project restoring schools. The leading figure is Qamar, big, bluff and not afraid to take on the authorities. He spent ten days in jail not so long ago, false charges arising from a demo. Not so different from Bolton perhaps.
Today, I’m interpreted by Zahud, a very senior local trade unionist, first active in the movements of the 1960s, and an authority in these parts on labour law. He speaks very precise and traditional English. The much younger Tariq, with various admin and finance responsibilities, was only occasionally there. Last night, though, he accompanied me for a walk. We are on the edge of the city, so there are small fields growing wheat, watered by a new local irrigation system. The young donkey sitting in the dust apparently likes sitting in the dust and may be someone’s pet. Walking past a flour mill, two young workers come out, one with hair caked in flour. They can just about earn the minimum wage of 7000 rupees a month (about £2 a day), filling 25 and 50kg bags at 4 rupees a bag. The job runs round the year but, like 95% of workers, they have no letter of appointment, no social security card and no job security. Technically unlawful, the workers accept this with resignation as most employers ignore almost all labour laws.
The best moment, perhaps, comes talking about the huge differences between Britain and Pakistan; Britain’s wealth came from the pillage of the Raj (applause). But, in Britain today we have rich and poor, ruthless bosses and victimised trade unionists, just as they do. A number of questions follow including if it is true that old people live in special homes. By the end, things were lively and the last session overruns with a poem by the national poet, Allama Iqbal, which most people join in, singing softly. As we leave, one of the class comes up and says it was so good, he thinks I must be a Muslim.
The plane is late. I chat with a mobile phone company sales exec. Nowhere are call rates lower than in Pakistan with fierce competition for market share. 100 million phones in a population of 170 million. Even the poorest communities use them. The bonded labourers use them to organise. After a couple of hours, my companion gives up waiting and goes back to his office.
It’s a couple of hours drive from the airport to Haripur in what used to be North West Frontier Province, NWFP, and now is Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa, KPK. It’s a middle sized industrial town, a few hundred thousand, swollen with a hundred and fifty thousand Afghan refugees on the Grand Trunk Road that runs from Calcutta to Kabul. Though the city looks gerry built - the parallel with Manchester in 1844 holds good with mess everywhere – it hasn't got the dust of Multan and Karachi.
Tuesday 7 December, Haripur
The course is hard work with a group of 25, all sitting on cushions round a room that is just large enough, mostly experienced trade unionists, a good mix of factory workers, e.g. textiles and cooking oil and office workers and also the secretary of the rickshaw drivers union. On the second day, we start the course with a little recruitment activity in which people take turns to try to recruit each other and they thoroughly enjoy it. I was afraid that, as older activists, they wouldn't want to do this sort of thing but I was quite wrong. We are working in the Labour Resource Centre with a local NGO. The activists are on the left and, of course, doing far too much. Yesterday evening they arrived having driven from a flood devastated area where they are working on a project restoring schools. The leading figure is Qamar, big, bluff and not afraid to take on the authorities. He spent ten days in jail not so long ago, false charges arising from a demo. Not so different from Bolton perhaps.
Today, I’m interpreted by Zahud, a very senior local trade unionist, first active in the movements of the 1960s, and an authority in these parts on labour law. He speaks very precise and traditional English. The much younger Tariq, with various admin and finance responsibilities, was only occasionally there. Last night, though, he accompanied me for a walk. We are on the edge of the city, so there are small fields growing wheat, watered by a new local irrigation system. The young donkey sitting in the dust apparently likes sitting in the dust and may be someone’s pet. Walking past a flour mill, two young workers come out, one with hair caked in flour. They can just about earn the minimum wage of 7000 rupees a month (about £2 a day), filling 25 and 50kg bags at 4 rupees a bag. The job runs round the year but, like 95% of workers, they have no letter of appointment, no social security card and no job security. Technically unlawful, the workers accept this with resignation as most employers ignore almost all labour laws.
The best moment, perhaps, comes talking about the huge differences between Britain and Pakistan; Britain’s wealth came from the pillage of the Raj (applause). But, in Britain today we have rich and poor, ruthless bosses and victimised trade unionists, just as they do. A number of questions follow including if it is true that old people live in special homes. By the end, things were lively and the last session overruns with a poem by the national poet, Allama Iqbal, which most people join in, singing softly. As we leave, one of the class comes up and says it was so good, he thinks I must be a Muslim.
Multan, city of saints and beggars and mangoes
Saturday 4 December
Munaza, lawyer, political and human rights activist and much else is organising the course here. We have a little time this afternoon so she kindly takes me to a saint's tomb, a shrine, as large as a house, octagonal with a green dome, candles burning outside. I take my shoes off to enter the inner sanctum with two tombs, the saint and his wife. There's an outer cloister with over a dozen smaller tombs. Beautiful carved roof beams. Quite a number of pilgrims, some beggars but no crowd. Some elite cops are outside, there have been bomb attacks on places like this and Muharram, the holiest time of the year for Shiites, is approaching in a couple of weeks. Security is being stepped up. Men riding pillion on motorcycles will be banned.
Sunday 5 December
Interesting day's teaching a mixed group of ten experienced local trade union leaders, together with ten intense, care worn brick kiln workers, quiet much of the time and then suddenly bursting with laughter when someone makes a good point.
In the evening I’m invited to supper by a progressive lawyer, Akram Bhatti, who owns a large orchard of a thousand mango trees, fifty five different varieties. All covered in a thick dust, as is everything here where it so seldom rains. His house has a beautiful, cool, walled garden. Immaculate, lots of elegant plants and a large collection of cacti of all size. It’s his hobby, he says. At the end of the evening I’m asked to plant some new item to commemorate my visit which is tricky as there isn’t much light but a young gardener helps me.
I’m introduced to his five children, 5 to 14, all model students. They do a fifteen hour day I term time: up at five, school at eight, home at four, two hours with private tutor, followed by three hours homework. The eldest two in their mid teens, Petam and Wasim speak English hesitantly but well. They have an exam every month in all major subjects, just like German schools. Their father is keen for them to become medics which he reckons is the only profession where they will be free to choose what they do and not be beholden to a boss. The food is good, the conversation flows but I never find out if there is a mother.
Munaza, lawyer, political and human rights activist and much else is organising the course here. We have a little time this afternoon so she kindly takes me to a saint's tomb, a shrine, as large as a house, octagonal with a green dome, candles burning outside. I take my shoes off to enter the inner sanctum with two tombs, the saint and his wife. There's an outer cloister with over a dozen smaller tombs. Beautiful carved roof beams. Quite a number of pilgrims, some beggars but no crowd. Some elite cops are outside, there have been bomb attacks on places like this and Muharram, the holiest time of the year for Shiites, is approaching in a couple of weeks. Security is being stepped up. Men riding pillion on motorcycles will be banned.
Sunday 5 December
Interesting day's teaching a mixed group of ten experienced local trade union leaders, together with ten intense, care worn brick kiln workers, quiet much of the time and then suddenly bursting with laughter when someone makes a good point.
In the evening I’m invited to supper by a progressive lawyer, Akram Bhatti, who owns a large orchard of a thousand mango trees, fifty five different varieties. All covered in a thick dust, as is everything here where it so seldom rains. His house has a beautiful, cool, walled garden. Immaculate, lots of elegant plants and a large collection of cacti of all size. It’s his hobby, he says. At the end of the evening I’m asked to plant some new item to commemorate my visit which is tricky as there isn’t much light but a young gardener helps me.
I’m introduced to his five children, 5 to 14, all model students. They do a fifteen hour day I term time: up at five, school at eight, home at four, two hours with private tutor, followed by three hours homework. The eldest two in their mid teens, Petam and Wasim speak English hesitantly but well. They have an exam every month in all major subjects, just like German schools. Their father is keen for them to become medics which he reckons is the only profession where they will be free to choose what they do and not be beholden to a boss. The food is good, the conversation flows but I never find out if there is a mother.
Lahore High Court and with Umer to the fort and Badshahi mosque
Friday 3 December
Setting off this morning for a very short early stroll round my hotel, having gone a hundred yards or so, I find myself walking into the Lahore High Court. All brick, it’s vast, a fine example of Victorian gothic.
Full of smartly dressed lawyers, whose 2008/9 battle against first the dictator Musharraf and then the new president, Zardari, to get the Chief Justice Iftikar Choudery reinstated is one of the few real victories for democracy we’ve seen here in years. They had to demonstrate again and again, often, despite their smart suits, being savagely beaten police using latti, five foot batons. Despite the building crawling with police, staffing electronic security doors and new, elegantly designed small watch towers on the perimeter wall - Lahore has seen some awful suicide bombings in the last eighteen months – there is an air of brisk efficiency.
Late morning and early afternoon is spent with the bright young comrade Umer, who is interested in ideas. We agree to walk and talk around the Lahore fort, and then, next to it, to the Badshahi mosque and finally, with the little time left, we have a curry on the roof of an old courtesan’s house, now restaurant, overlooking both fort and mosque. The only hassle is from a nasty young plain clothes ISI (intelligence) officer who tries to get Umer to tell him who I am and why I’m going to the mosque. It is amazing, and quite shocking that it doesn’t seem to occur to him that I’m visiting this fantastic building as a tourist. Rather, as the only ‘gora’ (white person) in sight, I’m viewed with suspicion. The mosque is simply breath taking, one of the great buildings of the world. The architect cleverly laid out a huge courtyard in front of it, so everyone has to see the mosque as a whole on entering.
Our conversation ranges from why in the early modern period; merchant capitalism takes off in Europe and not in the much richer and more powerful regions of India and China to how to be active as a socialist. Umer wants to set up a socialist community. I argue that the efforts of the great utopian socialists Fourier and Robert Owen all failed, no island of socialism in a hostile world is possible and that the community has to be a community of activists, a revolutionary party. Umer has avoided being a student so far, organising his own reading (from Marx to Nietzsche), being an activist – in an old style communist party - and traveling. He’s been to the north, visiting a Maoist village replete with red flags and chanting, surrounded by villages with Islamist flags and chanting, all extremely poor, none of them a model for anybody. Next year he plans to become a student, perhaps in Canada.
Setting off this morning for a very short early stroll round my hotel, having gone a hundred yards or so, I find myself walking into the Lahore High Court. All brick, it’s vast, a fine example of Victorian gothic.
Full of smartly dressed lawyers, whose 2008/9 battle against first the dictator Musharraf and then the new president, Zardari, to get the Chief Justice Iftikar Choudery reinstated is one of the few real victories for democracy we’ve seen here in years. They had to demonstrate again and again, often, despite their smart suits, being savagely beaten police using latti, five foot batons. Despite the building crawling with police, staffing electronic security doors and new, elegantly designed small watch towers on the perimeter wall - Lahore has seen some awful suicide bombings in the last eighteen months – there is an air of brisk efficiency.
Late morning and early afternoon is spent with the bright young comrade Umer, who is interested in ideas. We agree to walk and talk around the Lahore fort, and then, next to it, to the Badshahi mosque and finally, with the little time left, we have a curry on the roof of an old courtesan’s house, now restaurant, overlooking both fort and mosque. The only hassle is from a nasty young plain clothes ISI (intelligence) officer who tries to get Umer to tell him who I am and why I’m going to the mosque. It is amazing, and quite shocking that it doesn’t seem to occur to him that I’m visiting this fantastic building as a tourist. Rather, as the only ‘gora’ (white person) in sight, I’m viewed with suspicion. The mosque is simply breath taking, one of the great buildings of the world. The architect cleverly laid out a huge courtyard in front of it, so everyone has to see the mosque as a whole on entering.
Our conversation ranges from why in the early modern period; merchant capitalism takes off in Europe and not in the much richer and more powerful regions of India and China to how to be active as a socialist. Umer wants to set up a socialist community. I argue that the efforts of the great utopian socialists Fourier and Robert Owen all failed, no island of socialism in a hostile world is possible and that the community has to be a community of activists, a revolutionary party. Umer has avoided being a student so far, organising his own reading (from Marx to Nietzsche), being an activist – in an old style communist party - and traveling. He’s been to the north, visiting a Maoist village replete with red flags and chanting, surrounded by villages with Islamist flags and chanting, all extremely poor, none of them a model for anybody. Next year he plans to become a student, perhaps in Canada.
A school, a press conference and by bus to Lahore
Thursday 2 December
Up early to visit Raja Wajid’s school. Rana Wajid is a philanthropist, well off with time on his hands. It’s literally his school; he owns it, the Webster Grammar School, a franchise. Lots of bright coloured paint but, as far as equipment, is concerned all very spartan. Thirty middle class pupils, aged 4 - 10, with five teachers and a head, all women, in a large house. Over a cup of tea in the head’s office, I'm asked to give tips which I politely try to avoid. Public education is a scandal. It gets 2% of GDP , much of which is wasted or stolen. Not surprising when the military gets 40% of the state budget and, international debt repayment not much less.
Day Two of the textile workers course starts with how to get unity between men and women, a real discussion which the women in particular appreciate. At lunch time, we dash to a press conference, four or five journalists coming to talk about the jailing of the four workers after the July protest over wages – they demanded 17% and got 13% - inflation is now over 15%. The charges include “terrorism”, a measure of the ability of employers to bribe the police and get false charges laid. There’s also Chaudhry Tahir, LQM secretary from Jhang, a nearby city, who faces fake charges of attempted murder, theft and more. Against this the union has only its numbers but the experience is that when you get enough people properly organised, you can beat this kind of bullying. Chaudhry is proposing a long march from Jhang to Lahore, 130 miles, to the house of Shahbaz Sharif, chief minister of the Punjab, brother of Nawaz Sharif, former prime minister, and organise a hunger strike outside it. It sounds over the top but the brothers need votes and are full of populist rhetoric at the moment.
After that back to finish course and, together with Tariq, take the Daewoo bus back to Lahore, very comfortable - there’s a stewardess on the coach - and very punctual. Security is tight, our bags are checked before we get on the bus and once we are seated, each of us has our photo taken.
Up early to visit Raja Wajid’s school. Rana Wajid is a philanthropist, well off with time on his hands. It’s literally his school; he owns it, the Webster Grammar School, a franchise. Lots of bright coloured paint but, as far as equipment, is concerned all very spartan. Thirty middle class pupils, aged 4 - 10, with five teachers and a head, all women, in a large house. Over a cup of tea in the head’s office, I'm asked to give tips which I politely try to avoid. Public education is a scandal. It gets 2% of GDP , much of which is wasted or stolen. Not surprising when the military gets 40% of the state budget and, international debt repayment not much less.
Day Two of the textile workers course starts with how to get unity between men and women, a real discussion which the women in particular appreciate. At lunch time, we dash to a press conference, four or five journalists coming to talk about the jailing of the four workers after the July protest over wages – they demanded 17% and got 13% - inflation is now over 15%. The charges include “terrorism”, a measure of the ability of employers to bribe the police and get false charges laid. There’s also Chaudhry Tahir, LQM secretary from Jhang, a nearby city, who faces fake charges of attempted murder, theft and more. Against this the union has only its numbers but the experience is that when you get enough people properly organised, you can beat this kind of bullying. Chaudhry is proposing a long march from Jhang to Lahore, 130 miles, to the house of Shahbaz Sharif, chief minister of the Punjab, brother of Nawaz Sharif, former prime minister, and organise a hunger strike outside it. It sounds over the top but the brothers need votes and are full of populist rhetoric at the moment.
After that back to finish course and, together with Tariq, take the Daewoo bus back to Lahore, very comfortable - there’s a stewardess on the coach - and very punctual. Security is tight, our bags are checked before we get on the bus and once we are seated, each of us has our photo taken.
With textile workers and a pre-wedding celebration
Wednesday 1 December
Today with twenty or so mainly hosiery and garment workers, day one of a two day course. After a bumpy start with half the class - the women - arriving late, and then the usual nervousness as people slowly get used to being asked to do things in the class, like talk to each other and give reports, everyone starts to enjoy themselves.
We’re in the city’s large and tasteful art centre. There is a hideous ceremony outside with boy scouts saluting dignitaries (whom they’ve been waiting for, standing to attention, for over an hour). It’s the opening of an exhibition of school children’s art work about helping flood relief victims with the motto ‘Charity brings cheer’. The director of the centre, a thoughtful looking man in his sixties, appears. Tariq tells me he’s been in the job 17 years which means he’s politically skilled, able to survive all the political upheavals, using his position to keep in with all the “influentials” as they are called here. You have to know their weaknesses, Tariq says.
It’s a wonderfully determined and spirited group of mainly young workers on the course. The reports people give of what happens at work sound straight out of Engels. The illegally low wages, 5,000 rupees a month (about £10 a week), instead of the legal minimum wage of 7,000, often paid as much as or more than a month late, forced overtime at single time (the law says it should be paid at double time), twelve hour shifts, seven day weeks, harassment of women workers (there is a new law against sexual harassment here, though no reports yet of it making any impact), no first aid facilities, no masks to protect from the dust, no ear protectors to shield from the noise. And these are big factories, usually with hundreds of workers, sometimes thousands. So far there hasn't been any successful unionisation (though there is one company, Interloop, that follows the law, a model employer, a 'New Lanark'). Very interesting to have women students wearing the niqab taking a full part in the course including giving reports from their groups .
We are visited on the course by the weak looking Director of the Labour Department and his nasty looking deputy. Labour Departments have a reputation for taking bribes from employers but can be pressured e.g. by organising demos outside their offices. We are polite but give some tough questions making it clear that we aren't going to rely on him to get our rights, challenging them on the outrageous suspension of inspections of workplaces, ongoing for some years now. My suspicion is that they are here to see how confident the students are and wondering when this is going to turn into a much bigger movement.
In the evening, spent in the home of one of the organisers where I am given some wonderful food, I find out that many of the women had worked a night shift till 5am and then got some sleep before coming. At the end of the meal, Tahir, my host, suggests we go to a wedding. Or rather a Mehndi, a kind of stag night, the night before the actual wedding. A five minute walk brings us to a crowd of young men with music from two drums and a flute where we meet the serious looking groom, perhaps in his late twenties and his (male) friends and also Aslam from the LQM. The groom looks stressed. We enter a courtyard, with a colourful flat sided and topped marquee to give it atmosphere. I sit with Tahir and Aslam, among perhaps a hundred men, more coming in all the time. A large man offers me a drink from a stainless steel jug. As always, I politely decline water unless I’m 100% sure it’s OK. A moment later someone else accepts and then briefly I see the whiskey bottle that’s filled the jug. . Aslam declines as well, but most accept. Looking at the young men dancing, at least one is seriously drunk. The music switches from drums and flute to Indian disco and three keen dancers show off their synchronized routines . Suddenly, there’s a very loud crack and then another, a handgun being fired in the air. I persuade Tahir we need to be fresh for tomorrow and we leave. Tomorrow Aslam tells me that after we leave the police arrested four people, releasing them after a couple of hours.
Today with twenty or so mainly hosiery and garment workers, day one of a two day course. After a bumpy start with half the class - the women - arriving late, and then the usual nervousness as people slowly get used to being asked to do things in the class, like talk to each other and give reports, everyone starts to enjoy themselves.
We’re in the city’s large and tasteful art centre. There is a hideous ceremony outside with boy scouts saluting dignitaries (whom they’ve been waiting for, standing to attention, for over an hour). It’s the opening of an exhibition of school children’s art work about helping flood relief victims with the motto ‘Charity brings cheer’. The director of the centre, a thoughtful looking man in his sixties, appears. Tariq tells me he’s been in the job 17 years which means he’s politically skilled, able to survive all the political upheavals, using his position to keep in with all the “influentials” as they are called here. You have to know their weaknesses, Tariq says.
It’s a wonderfully determined and spirited group of mainly young workers on the course. The reports people give of what happens at work sound straight out of Engels. The illegally low wages, 5,000 rupees a month (about £10 a week), instead of the legal minimum wage of 7,000, often paid as much as or more than a month late, forced overtime at single time (the law says it should be paid at double time), twelve hour shifts, seven day weeks, harassment of women workers (there is a new law against sexual harassment here, though no reports yet of it making any impact), no first aid facilities, no masks to protect from the dust, no ear protectors to shield from the noise. And these are big factories, usually with hundreds of workers, sometimes thousands. So far there hasn't been any successful unionisation (though there is one company, Interloop, that follows the law, a model employer, a 'New Lanark'). Very interesting to have women students wearing the niqab taking a full part in the course including giving reports from their groups .
We are visited on the course by the weak looking Director of the Labour Department and his nasty looking deputy. Labour Departments have a reputation for taking bribes from employers but can be pressured e.g. by organising demos outside their offices. We are polite but give some tough questions making it clear that we aren't going to rely on him to get our rights, challenging them on the outrageous suspension of inspections of workplaces, ongoing for some years now. My suspicion is that they are here to see how confident the students are and wondering when this is going to turn into a much bigger movement.
In the evening, spent in the home of one of the organisers where I am given some wonderful food, I find out that many of the women had worked a night shift till 5am and then got some sleep before coming. At the end of the meal, Tahir, my host, suggests we go to a wedding. Or rather a Mehndi, a kind of stag night, the night before the actual wedding. A five minute walk brings us to a crowd of young men with music from two drums and a flute where we meet the serious looking groom, perhaps in his late twenties and his (male) friends and also Aslam from the LQM. The groom looks stressed. We enter a courtyard, with a colourful flat sided and topped marquee to give it atmosphere. I sit with Tahir and Aslam, among perhaps a hundred men, more coming in all the time. A large man offers me a drink from a stainless steel jug. As always, I politely decline water unless I’m 100% sure it’s OK. A moment later someone else accepts and then briefly I see the whiskey bottle that’s filled the jug. . Aslam declines as well, but most accept. Looking at the young men dancing, at least one is seriously drunk. The music switches from drums and flute to Indian disco and three keen dancers show off their synchronized routines . Suddenly, there’s a very loud crack and then another, a handgun being fired in the air. I persuade Tahir we need to be fresh for tomorrow and we leave. Tomorrow Aslam tells me that after we leave the police arrested four people, releasing them after a couple of hours.
Working with the LQM in Faisalabad
Sunday 28 November, Lahore to Faisalabad
A quiet day ending with a two and a half hours drive from Lahore to Faisalabad, the ‘Manchester of Pakistan’ with up to half a million textile workers. It’s a straight flat road into the setting sun across the dusty but fertile Punjab plain, through small towns and past a few very large factories. Wherever there is water, there is an explosion of green.
The next two days are with the power loom workers union, Labour Qaumi Movement, LQM, followed by two days with a group of home based and other informal sector workers. Late on Sunday we talk with a couple of LQM activists about what they’ve been doing over the last year and what we are going to do on the course. This includes battles between a thousand strikers and the police in July. Four members are still in jail. They come up with the idea of electing me as their international representative. I explain I’m honoured but there is already a global union federation of textile, leather and garment workers. Perhaps we could organise a trade union link on May Day between Faisalabad and Manchester.
Monday 29 November, Faisalabad
Fifteen or so senior LQM officers on the course but very few women. The LQM has about 20,000 members, almost all on insecure jobs without proper contracts. Many own their looms, working in their own homes as subcontractors. Before we start, I’m given a letter written by Samina, secretary of the LQM’s women’s section. Her mother has suddenly died and the funeral is today.
Our first activity is writing the history of the union over the last 12 months, picking the most important events, a strike over pay, with demos and battles with the police, a campaign against power cuts (which stop them working) and another against the bulldozing of people’s houses, a different group works on each one, putting a summary on a flip chart. They’ve won all these battles.
Then we are joined by six women, all home based workers. At first they say little and then a woman glove maker, working at home, makes a passionate speech about how they are robbed day in, day out by the middlemen, who pay 5 rupees (4 pence) for sewing a dozen pairs of gloves, an hour’s work. She goes on to explain how some of the women have had to lie to their husbands about what they were doing today so they could come on the course.
This evening, relaxing with Tariq and Aslam, LQM secretary, I find how the LQM has the respect of at least some of the employers. Suddenly, the chair of the power loom employers, Waheed, appears in the hotel. Excellent English, elegantly turned out and most polite, he stops for twenty minutes or so to pay his respects, show how keen he is “to have good relations with the LQM and tell us how grim the future looks, especially for small power loom workers.
A quiet day ending with a two and a half hours drive from Lahore to Faisalabad, the ‘Manchester of Pakistan’ with up to half a million textile workers. It’s a straight flat road into the setting sun across the dusty but fertile Punjab plain, through small towns and past a few very large factories. Wherever there is water, there is an explosion of green.
The next two days are with the power loom workers union, Labour Qaumi Movement, LQM, followed by two days with a group of home based and other informal sector workers. Late on Sunday we talk with a couple of LQM activists about what they’ve been doing over the last year and what we are going to do on the course. This includes battles between a thousand strikers and the police in July. Four members are still in jail. They come up with the idea of electing me as their international representative. I explain I’m honoured but there is already a global union federation of textile, leather and garment workers. Perhaps we could organise a trade union link on May Day between Faisalabad and Manchester.
Monday 29 November, Faisalabad
Fifteen or so senior LQM officers on the course but very few women. The LQM has about 20,000 members, almost all on insecure jobs without proper contracts. Many own their looms, working in their own homes as subcontractors. Before we start, I’m given a letter written by Samina, secretary of the LQM’s women’s section. Her mother has suddenly died and the funeral is today.
Our first activity is writing the history of the union over the last 12 months, picking the most important events, a strike over pay, with demos and battles with the police, a campaign against power cuts (which stop them working) and another against the bulldozing of people’s houses, a different group works on each one, putting a summary on a flip chart. They’ve won all these battles.
Then we are joined by six women, all home based workers. At first they say little and then a woman glove maker, working at home, makes a passionate speech about how they are robbed day in, day out by the middlemen, who pay 5 rupees (4 pence) for sewing a dozen pairs of gloves, an hour’s work. She goes on to explain how some of the women have had to lie to their husbands about what they were doing today so they could come on the course.
This evening, relaxing with Tariq and Aslam, LQM secretary, I find how the LQM has the respect of at least some of the employers. Suddenly, the chair of the power loom employers, Waheed, appears in the hotel. Excellent English, elegantly turned out and most polite, he stops for twenty minutes or so to pay his respects, show how keen he is “to have good relations with the LQM and tell us how grim the future looks, especially for small power loom workers.
Teaching and talking politics in Lahore
Saturday 27 November, Lahore
The students starting today come from a range of industries, home-based women workers, small factories employing both men and women and the brick industry. They’re in various organisations: the Labour Resource Centre, the Organisation for Women’s Rights and the Bonded Labour Liberation Front. This last is the brick kiln workers who are traditionally locked into debt slavery, passed on through the generations, possibly the most exploited workers in Pakistan. Bonded labour is now illegal but, as always, the problem is getting the law implemented.
As the participants shake off their nervousness , the course takes off and there’s a lively finish to the day discussing women’s oppression and how to fight it, with the men in one group and three groups of women.
This evening, Rizwan, editor of a smallish magazine with a serious interest in socialist theory, comes and we go for a cup of tea in Anarkali an old street now mercifully pedestrianised, full of cafes in the very centre of the city. A little later we are joined by first two and then more students. Anarkali is the traditional meeting place of the left, artists and the intelligentsia. It was once one of the great cultural centres of the Indian subcontinent but repression by military dictators and the rise of Islamic militancy, usually encouraged by politicians, has reduced it to a shadow of what it was. We drink lots of delicious Kashmiri tea, flavoured with almonds and finish agreeing that we will have a meeting tomorrow on ‘Education, capitalism and the student revolt in Britain’.
Sunday 28 November, Lahore
The facilities for teaching in the basement of the hotel are basic but OK. By far the worst problem is when the imam in the mosque across the road starts the midday prayers making a horrible noise through an ugly set of loudspeakers. Today we do 'The Great Money Trick taken from a chapter in Robert Tressell’s famous 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, in which the hero does a role play with his work mates to explain how capitalism works, using bread and penknives and pennies. No pennies or rupee coins available so we use sweets and spoons instead of penknives.
The evening is with a dozen or so leftist students, in a student flat cum office in a suburb somewhere in this vast city with well over five million inhabitants. . All the papers here, including the Urdu ones, have front page colour photos of students and police confronting each other in Whitehall, they are keen to talk about the new movement in Britain. As often happens here, we finish with a long and useful discussion about basic socialist ideas. I get back to my hotel on the back of a motorbike courtesy of Irfan with two stops en route to meet with leftist friends of his, old and young, sitting at the roadside or in a café.
The students starting today come from a range of industries, home-based women workers, small factories employing both men and women and the brick industry. They’re in various organisations: the Labour Resource Centre, the Organisation for Women’s Rights and the Bonded Labour Liberation Front. This last is the brick kiln workers who are traditionally locked into debt slavery, passed on through the generations, possibly the most exploited workers in Pakistan. Bonded labour is now illegal but, as always, the problem is getting the law implemented.
As the participants shake off their nervousness , the course takes off and there’s a lively finish to the day discussing women’s oppression and how to fight it, with the men in one group and three groups of women.
This evening, Rizwan, editor of a smallish magazine with a serious interest in socialist theory, comes and we go for a cup of tea in Anarkali an old street now mercifully pedestrianised, full of cafes in the very centre of the city. A little later we are joined by first two and then more students. Anarkali is the traditional meeting place of the left, artists and the intelligentsia. It was once one of the great cultural centres of the Indian subcontinent but repression by military dictators and the rise of Islamic militancy, usually encouraged by politicians, has reduced it to a shadow of what it was. We drink lots of delicious Kashmiri tea, flavoured with almonds and finish agreeing that we will have a meeting tomorrow on ‘Education, capitalism and the student revolt in Britain’.
Sunday 28 November, Lahore
The facilities for teaching in the basement of the hotel are basic but OK. By far the worst problem is when the imam in the mosque across the road starts the midday prayers making a horrible noise through an ugly set of loudspeakers. Today we do 'The Great Money Trick taken from a chapter in Robert Tressell’s famous 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, in which the hero does a role play with his work mates to explain how capitalism works, using bread and penknives and pennies. No pennies or rupee coins available so we use sweets and spoons instead of penknives.
The evening is with a dozen or so leftist students, in a student flat cum office in a suburb somewhere in this vast city with well over five million inhabitants. . All the papers here, including the Urdu ones, have front page colour photos of students and police confronting each other in Whitehall, they are keen to talk about the new movement in Britain. As often happens here, we finish with a long and useful discussion about basic socialist ideas. I get back to my hotel on the back of a motorbike courtesy of Irfan with two stops en route to meet with leftist friends of his, old and young, sitting at the roadside or in a café.
Working in Lahore
Saturday 27 November, Lahore
The students starting today come from a range of industries, home-based women workers, small factories employing both men and women and the brick industry. They’re in various organisations: the Labour Resource Centre, the Organisation for Women’s Rights and the Bonded Labour Liberation Front. This last is the brick kiln workers who are traditionally locked into debt slavery, passed on through the generations, possibly the most exploited workers in Pakistan. Bonded labour is now illegal but, as always, the problem is getting the law implemented.
As the participants shake off their nervousness , the course takes off and there’s a lively finish to the day discussing women’s oppression and how to fight it, with the men in one group and three groups of women.
This evening, Rizwan, editor of a smallish magazine with a serious interest in socialist theory, comes and we go for a cup of tea in Anarkali an old street now mercifully pedestrianised, full of cafes in the very centre of the city. A little later we are joined by first two and then more students. Anarkali is the traditional meeting place of the left, artists and the intelligentsia. It was once one of the great cultural centres of the Indian subcontinent but repression by military dictators and the rise of Islamic militancy, usually encouraged by politicians, has reduced it to a shadow of what it was. We drink lots of delicious Kashmiri tea, flavoured with almonds and finish agreeing that we will have a meeting tomorrow on ‘Education, capitalism and the student revolt in Britain’.
Sunday 28 November, Lahore
The facilities for teaching in the basement of the hotel are basic but OK. By far the worst problem is when the imam in the mosque across the road starts the midday prayers making a horrible noise through an ugly set of loudspeakers. Today we do 'The Great Money Trick taken from a chapter in Robert Tressell’s famous 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, in which the hero does a role play with his work mates to explain how capitalism works, using bread and penknives and pennies. No pennies or rupee coins available so we use sweets and spoons instead of penknives.
The evening is with a dozen or so leftist students, in a student flat cum office in a suburb somewhere in this vast city with well over five million inhabitants. . All the papers here, including the Urdu ones, have front page colour photos of students and police confronting each other in Whitehall, they are keen to talk about the new movement in Britain. As often happens here, we finish with a long and useful discussion about basic socialist ideas. I get back to my hotel on the back of a motorbike courtesy of Irfan with two stops en route to meet with leftist friends of his, old and young, sitting at the roadside or in a café.
The students starting today come from a range of industries, home-based women workers, small factories employing both men and women and the brick industry. They’re in various organisations: the Labour Resource Centre, the Organisation for Women’s Rights and the Bonded Labour Liberation Front. This last is the brick kiln workers who are traditionally locked into debt slavery, passed on through the generations, possibly the most exploited workers in Pakistan. Bonded labour is now illegal but, as always, the problem is getting the law implemented.
As the participants shake off their nervousness , the course takes off and there’s a lively finish to the day discussing women’s oppression and how to fight it, with the men in one group and three groups of women.
This evening, Rizwan, editor of a smallish magazine with a serious interest in socialist theory, comes and we go for a cup of tea in Anarkali an old street now mercifully pedestrianised, full of cafes in the very centre of the city. A little later we are joined by first two and then more students. Anarkali is the traditional meeting place of the left, artists and the intelligentsia. It was once one of the great cultural centres of the Indian subcontinent but repression by military dictators and the rise of Islamic militancy, usually encouraged by politicians, has reduced it to a shadow of what it was. We drink lots of delicious Kashmiri tea, flavoured with almonds and finish agreeing that we will have a meeting tomorrow on ‘Education, capitalism and the student revolt in Britain’.
Sunday 28 November, Lahore
The facilities for teaching in the basement of the hotel are basic but OK. By far the worst problem is when the imam in the mosque across the road starts the midday prayers making a horrible noise through an ugly set of loudspeakers. Today we do 'The Great Money Trick taken from a chapter in Robert Tressell’s famous 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, in which the hero does a role play with his work mates to explain how capitalism works, using bread and penknives and pennies. No pennies or rupee coins available so we use sweets and spoons instead of penknives.
The evening is with a dozen or so leftist students, in a student flat cum office in a suburb somewhere in this vast city with well over five million inhabitants. . All the papers here, including the Urdu ones, have front page colour photos of students and police confronting each other in Whitehall, they are keen to talk about the new movement in Britain. As often happens here, we finish with a long and useful discussion about basic socialist ideas. I get back to my hotel on the back of a motorbike courtesy of Irfan with two stops en route to meet with leftist friends of his, old and young, sitting at the roadside or in a café.
Visiting flood refugees
Wednesday 24 November
Just before lunch I go with Rafiq, junior PILER staff member, across the road to the Labour Colony, a giant thousand flat housing complex built for workers that has been empty over five years as government bureaucrats fight over who should control what has been built with money from social security contributions. Initially, it housed about 15,000 flood refugees , a third of whom have now gone back. I’m taken to meet the teachers, mostly very young women; their classes are mostly around eighty children, sitting on the floor, many studying English. Very basic equipment and books but the atmosphere is good. For many of the children, particularly the girls, this is the first time they’ve ever been to school and for many of the families; this is the best housing they have known. Having lost their homes, livestock, farm tools, and seed for the next season, it is hard to see them going back to their villages so long as they can stay here.
Outside there is a set of large water filters that PILER has helped put up with a queue, mainly women, waiting to fill large containers. When I suggest to Rafiq that these might be too heavy for them to carry, he laughs at my naivety. Water fit for human consumption is expensive in Karachi. Many areas are dependent on water tankers run by the ‘water mafia’. No mafia here.
From talking to Karamat this evening, as well as the comrades at the week-end, it seems the left is finding things tough, mainly because the security situation and the fear it creates which makes mobilising people harder.
Tonight the students in Britain are on the TV news. I don't remember such a day when I was waiting so impatiently for things to happen and felt so good when they did. Since lunch I haven’t done much else apart from sitting on the internet. Tomorrow I fly to Lahore.
Just before lunch I go with Rafiq, junior PILER staff member, across the road to the Labour Colony, a giant thousand flat housing complex built for workers that has been empty over five years as government bureaucrats fight over who should control what has been built with money from social security contributions. Initially, it housed about 15,000 flood refugees , a third of whom have now gone back. I’m taken to meet the teachers, mostly very young women; their classes are mostly around eighty children, sitting on the floor, many studying English. Very basic equipment and books but the atmosphere is good. For many of the children, particularly the girls, this is the first time they’ve ever been to school and for many of the families; this is the best housing they have known. Having lost their homes, livestock, farm tools, and seed for the next season, it is hard to see them going back to their villages so long as they can stay here.
Outside there is a set of large water filters that PILER has helped put up with a queue, mainly women, waiting to fill large containers. When I suggest to Rafiq that these might be too heavy for them to carry, he laughs at my naivety. Water fit for human consumption is expensive in Karachi. Many areas are dependent on water tankers run by the ‘water mafia’. No mafia here.
From talking to Karamat this evening, as well as the comrades at the week-end, it seems the left is finding things tough, mainly because the security situation and the fear it creates which makes mobilising people harder.
Tonight the students in Britain are on the TV news. I don't remember such a day when I was waiting so impatiently for things to happen and felt so good when they did. Since lunch I haven’t done much else apart from sitting on the internet. Tomorrow I fly to Lahore.
Arriving in Karachi, Saturday 20 November
Arriving at 2 am, the customs control is more relaxed than before, concrete blocks have replaced sandbags at security checkpoints and the big MacDonalds in the car park is in your face as you leave the terminal building. I’ve rung my friend and comrade Riaz from the baggage hall and he’s there to greet me with his warm, enigmatic smile.
Despite late night discussion, I’m up at nine. With a pile of papers, ‘Dawn’, the liberal English language newspaper. I put them in date order and read sitting in the sun in Riaz’s tiny courtyard. The news is almost all grim .
In the evening, the flat fills with comrades, an informal meeting. I talk briefly about the new student movement in Britain. We discuss selling the paper to students, very difficult here with the threat of violence from the Islamist student organizations on the public university campuses and the omnipresence of security guards on the private ones. Then we talk about the Palestinian solidarity ‘caravan’ which will start soon in India and go through Pakistan and Iran finishing in Gaza. We decide to produce this poster. Seven or eight of us sleep here overnight quite comfortably
Sunday 21 November
Mid-day we make a trip out with Sartaj, whose excellent article on ‘Imperialism, religion and class in Swat’ is in ISJ123 and two other comrades, Asim who works for PIA and Gul Passand who is now a quality checker in a textile mill. We drive to the port and take a boat trip. Beautiful weather, lots of ferry boats on the quay taking people to the small island of Manoro nearby. I spot just one woman wearing a royal blue burka. Biscuits are being handed round and she whips the burka up and we see her bright young face with lots of lipstick and makeup. Our small boat passes half a dozen navy minesweepers, a giant ship housing a 250MW power station hired at great expense to help with the of the city’s chronic power shortages – ‘load shedding’ as it is called. It’s just arrived and is being officially welcomed today. There’s just one fishing boat setting off with its crew sorting nets. In the distance there’s maybe a hundred fishing boats from India which have been seized by the navy for ‘trespassing’ in Pakistani territorial waters. India does the same to Pakistani fishermen. They are slung into prison to rot, often for years. The Fisher Folk and PILER are part of a joint India-Pakistan campaign to get them released.
Now to the National Museum, surrounded by beautiful lawns and fine trees, a rarity in Karachi. It’s a small but political collection with excellent exhibits showing the pre Muslim past including Mohenjo-daro, the 4,500 year old city, laid out on a geometric plan, and very fine sculptures of the Buddha. This history is ignored in the school curriculum. And then to, as it were, restore the role of Islam, there is a fine display of ‘Islamic culture’, great Islamic scientists and philosophers from 11th century to 14th century, well done but with little connection to Pakistan.
Monday 22 November
The pick and drop van collects me 8.30am prompt. A warm welcome in PILER and quickly a course programme is put together: one course in Lahore, two in Faisalabad, one in Multan, one in Haripur and one in Karachi. A course in Hyderabad looks unlikely as the Fisher Folk are still overwhelmed with flood relief work. And also a lecture at PILER when I get back.
The street life, which I see mainly through the windows of the pick and drop, never ceases to produce something new. This visit, I’ve brought a copy of Mayhew’s ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ (published by Paul Hamlyn in the ‘60s) for my colleague Zeenat - who besides doing research for PILER and much else - is an urbanist. My idea is that someone might do a similar job here, talking to the huge variety of street traders, hawkers, beggars, drivers, carriers, repairers, food stall workers, who encroach the pavements of thousands of cross roads in Karachi with its 16 million population. Bringing gifts is a hazardous affair. When I get back from my teaching outside Karachi. Zeenat gives me, a huge illustrated book about Karachi, ‘Karachiwala’ . In some ways it’s a Mayhew for today, giving a picture of the huge number of different ethnic and religious groups, coming from every corner of the subcontinent that make up the city, as it has grown since independence from 250,000 in 1947 to over 16 million.
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