Pakistan

Back in the 60’s, no onein Pakistan really thought “Pakistan would split into two”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bangladesh.

Fast forward to the 21st century, and once again a chunk of Pakistan has left the fold. Back in the days, it used to take a formal declaration of independence and a lot of deaths – in today’s modern world it’s pretty much the same, except the declarations are on TV and the internet, and the deaths by decapitation and stoning.

The NWFP was never really part of Pakistan from the beginning, and despite official denials all around, for all practical purposes it’s definitely no longer part of Pakistan. It was never governed by Pakistani law anyways, and scraped by on age-old custom, bullets and tribal jirgas. Men were men, sheep were sheep and women and the government stayed far away, out of sight, and if they ever ventured to do anything were slapped back in to submission double quick.

Read moreFrom bad to worse

No more democracy. When the Prime Minister keeps referring to an unelected emperor (Zardari) for every single decision of note, there is no democracy, or government for that matter.

The current elected govt ran the whole campaign on a single theme – that of restoring the judiciary, and are now trying to convince the country that that promise wasn’t actually promise, it was more of an intention, and even though they won’t actually follow through, the intention will remain!

The whole world is watching on in horror, as there is no one at the rickety bus which is Pakistan. The NYTimes very politely puts it: “Leadership Void Seen in Pakistan”:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/world/asia/24pstan.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all – a few excerpts from the article are below:

bq. Pakistan is in a leaderless drift four months after elections, according to Western diplomats and military officials, Pakistani politicians and Afghan officials who are increasingly worried that no one is really in charge.

The problem is that local politicians don’t read, so they still don’t know what is going on. Not they they ever know, but these days it’s really gotten ridiculous.

Read moreSigns of a fast crumbling government

Truth is stranger than fiction – who could have imagined that a country eats it’s young and once their souls and minds are gone it spits out the dried hollowed out husks into government bureaucracies around Pakistan.

You walk inside in the valley of the shadow of askew shelves groaning with files, all askew, stuttering fans stirring up yellowing pages under the light of flickering tube lights. People sit around listless, waiting for the next cup of tea and sms message, disturbed now and than by a visitor who mistakenly wanders in trying to get some work done, and sometimes by a peon shuffling around bulging files, in a endless cycle from desk to desk, sometimes only making the journey to the person sharing the same desk, other times all the way outside the room into an adjoining office.

Read moreObservations on a visit to a govt office in Karachi

“The Economist on tourism in developing countries:”:http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11376167

bq. Emerging economies are suspicious about the developed world telling them to act responsibly. Why shouldn’t they exploit their natural resources? A pristine hard-to-reach beach with a small exclusive hotel may be just what rich Westerners want; local fishermen would prefer new schools for their children. But with tourism, it is not so clear that rapid development really is in the locals’ economic interest. If their government trashes their natural habitat, it is like an investment manager who pays you big dividends out of your capital. The money is good for a while, but you lose in the long term.

While Karachi has no tourists per se, this article gets straight to the heart of Karachi’s endless cycles of self destruction. The entire development of Karachi’s coastline is straight out of Jared Diamond’s book “Collapse”:http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Societies-Choose-Fail-Succeed/dp/0143036556/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211138893&sr=8-1. Hoteliers from around the world have rushed in to take advantage of the city govt. selling away the coastline for a pittance, and now we find ourselves in the enviable position of living in “a city by the sea with not a single public beach”:http://ko.offroadpakistan.com/2007/09/the_sad_state_of_karachi_beaches.html.

There are no more beaches left in Karachi – there are a few pathetic remnants of once beautiful beaches – the rest have all been taken over by the military or sold off to private developers. Needless to say, they’re all walled off – I already “wrote about it earlier”:http://ko.offroadpakistan.com/2007/09/the_sad_state_of_karachi_beaches.html, but each visit to what’s left of Karachi’s coastline leaves me ever more depressed.

Read moreKarachi’s beaches: terminally ill, soon to perish

Pakistan has laughably simple politics. While there is a lot of skulduggery going on in the background, the governing rule is that the flavor of the day, whether an army dictator or elected emperor, is going to do whatever it takes to maintain his iron clad grip on the peacock throne.

In a democracy, you need a functioning independent judicial system. A functioning judiciary will take action to right wrongs as per the law, and that’s where the problem lies in Pakistan. Whether elected or brought up through the army ranks, the leader of the country is always on the wrong side of the law, and thus a functioning judiciary is impossible.

The judiciary in Pakistan was hanged by Musharraf back in March 2007, and Zardari is exhuming the corpse and sending it before a firing squad to ensure it doesn’t come back to haunt him. In a slight change from the Moguls of old, instead of only killing their entire family to ensure there is no challenger to the throne, these days all and sundry are targeted.

Zardari has made numerous promises over the last year to restore the judges, and recently he was asked on TV why he was not honoring his word to do so. His famous reply: “That was a political promise. It has nothing to do with reality”.

Time will tell how naked the emperor really is, in this case just a measly 4 days till May 12th, when yet another deadline is due to restore the judges illegally deposed by the old dictator.

Read moreOut with a dictator, in with an emperor

Adil Najam wonders “if Pakistani’s read?”:http://pakistaniat.com/2008/04/26/pakistan-library-libraries/ and links to a “fascinating article in the newspaper on the number of libraries in Pakistan”:http://www.thenews.com.pk/editorial_detail.asp?id=108540.

bq. Lahore, an ancient city of culture, now has more polo grounds than libraries. Lahore even has more offices for the chief minister (four in all) than libraries. Of course, the Chief Minister needs office space more than our children need libraries.

He hasn’t visited Karachi, where far as I know there are no public libraries at all. There is this interesting library run by the Army where you need to be a millionaire in order to join – they require you to first buy a plot of land in a army run housing scheme before borrowing books!

Lack of cities aside, Karachi is a tough city to read books. The average new book price is a 1000Rs, and while used books are much cheaper the selection is really limited. Ordering from Amazon is a hit and miss process – if you order by DHL or UPS the books always arrive, but the shipping costs are so high that it’s not worth while, and sometimes they charge duties on books. If you order by regular post, than the books get stolen sometimes, and it takes anywhere from 1 month to a year for the carton to arrive. The locally published books are also very expensive, and there just isn’t enough variety.

Read moreReading in Karachi