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.
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