Friday, July 15, 2016

Edhi, Old Home and our Bari Bi

I first met Maulana Abdul Sattar Edhi in the early 1980s in a deeply emotional context. My mother had read a detailed motivational description of Edhi and his work in Urdu Digest (or was it Sayyara Digest?) and then she also gave that to me to read. Thereafter I was assigned the task to visit Edhi Center in Kharadar and evaluate the veracity of the published account and inquire about Edhi's Apna Ghar. I had disembarked from bus near Denso Hall and had walked to the center through the maze of congested streets. I recall an open space in the middle encircled by 3 to 4 storey  flats on all sides except a narrow opening providing for a driveway entrance. The operational areas of the center were on ground floor with a concrete bench outside an office and some work area. I went inside the office and inquired about Mr Edhi. I was told to wait as he would be there shortly. I sat on the bench and waited.

Friday, July 8, 2016

Why Pakistani Democracies are a Sham? Costs of Controlling a Democracy from Outside

Why we had only sham democracies in Pakistan?
This post identifies eight fundamental tests on which our democracies fail to be called a real democracy. It identifies the forces and the compulsions that did not let them to mature into a real democracy. We will discuss the costs of sham democracies in a later post.


Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Costs of General Zia's Dictatorship in Pakistan

[To understand the context of this post, please read At What Cost! Why Compute Economic Costs of Faulty Political Decisions]
This post lists major cost elements of General Zia's Dictatorial 11-year rule from 1977-1988. It identifies five major cost categories: costs related to ideology of Pakistan, economic costs, governance costs, foreign policy costs and costs of political engineering. This post is in response to mostly naive comparison of dictatorial rules in Pakistan with some of the political regimes. Such comparison often ignores the long term economic and social costs accruing due to the polarization engendered by the dictatorial rule in which short-term agendas often dominate the long term strategic blunders:


To understand the context of this post, please read At What Cost! Why Compute Economic Costs of Faulty Political Decisions: Pakistan History 101

Costs of Sham Democracratic Governments in Pakistan

[To understand the context of this post, please read At What Cost! Why Compute Economic Costs of Faulty Political Decisions]
Sham Democracy vs Real Democracy: Discusses the question of whether we ever had a real democracy in Pakistan, and why our democracies have been sham. In this post we look at the costs of having a sham democracy. Total democratic constitutional rule in Pakistan had been only 4 years of ZAB from 1973-77; Please note that ZAB assumed power in 1971 as a first in the world Civilian Martial Law Administrator, which continued till 1973 when Pakistan's consensus constitution was promulgated. The musical chairs of prime ministership of BB and NS during the 1990, can only be termed as a quasi democracy as the Damocles sword of the 8th Amendment continued to hand over their two stints each of around 2 years each. Each of their rule was abruptly terminated by the establishment exercising the power directly or through the 8th amendment. AZ's rule after the end of 8th amendment was a dismal affair as his hands were effectively tied by the NRO and the existing arrangements with the establishment. NS3 rule since 2013 can be though as a more democratic regime, however, the unwritten rule is that ALL affairs with the neighboring countries would have a veto power from the establishment. It is for this reason, that the NS3 finds no need for a Minister of Foreign Affairs.