Hassanwazir's List: governance and corruption

• This may not be too far-fetched, given FBR`s own estimate of what can be plugged via better administration. For the past three years, it has stated that Rs15-20bn can be yielded through improvement in its internal working. Given that FBR has an incentive to understate the number, Rs100bn (over $1bn) a year is certainly a plausible number for total leakage.
• For an idea, consider the audit report for 2007-08, which listed irregularities amounting to Rs330bn for the year (over three per cent of GDP).
• By my reckoning, the heaviest loss of taxpayer money occurs in two areas where the public sector`s footprint is still very substantial: procurement, and the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP). Including petroleum and food commodities, annual procurement by the public sector totals billions of dollars, and spawns petty as well as mega-level corruption, despite the presence of the bureaucracy-manned Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA). The PSDP is another area that operates with a lack of transparency, with very substantial losses imposed on the economy by a faulty process starting from project selection to its costing, approval, implementation and monitoring.
• In the past four years, the annual subsidy to the power sector (for tariff differential as well as to cover operational loss) has amounted to Rs625bn. A not-insignificant part of these `losses` is caused by corruption. While difficult to quantify, the case of the Fata account is illustrative. The Rs85bn parked under this head as uncollectible receivables from the tribal agencies, and which was eventually paid for by public funds, represents use of electricity far in excess of Fata`s actual annual usage. Insiders in the sector have long claimed this is a `sundry` account where losses incurred by not collecting bills in other areas, in collusion with consumers, are parked
• Another area where fiscal resources can be saved relates to the untargeted nature of budgeted subsidies. Currently, other than for electricity, most of the subsidies are directed towards sectors (such as fertiliser) and corporations (such as Railways and the Trading Corporation of Pakistan), with little direct benefit to the final consumer. While elaborate targeted subsidy schemes are difficult and time-consuming to construct, the freeing up of budgetary resources for other beneficial interventions in the economy makes it a worthy enterprise.

3 more annotations...

• In a sense, this bad-governance phenomenon has become a factory for the production of what David Kilkunnen, a counter-insurgency expert, calls the “accidental guerrilla” — a person who is marginalised and disaffected, and thus picks up arms against the state because no one is willing to address his grievances. Today, the district administration cannot provide services to the people. Such services are crucial for an effective strategy against extremists

• over 2,500 years ago. Cyrus the Great (576-530BC), often referred to as the first Achaemenid emperor, founded the Persian empire which under his rule covered all the civilised states of the Near East, expanding to southwest Asia, much of Central Asia and parts of Europe and the Caucasus — the largest empire the world had then yet seen.
• Discovered in 1879 during excavations in Babylon was what is known as the Cyrus Cylinder dating back to 539BC. It lies in the British Museum which describes it as “an instrument of ancient Mesopotamian propaganda”. It has, however, been hailed by the UN as “an ancient declaration of human rights” and is regarded by modern Iran as a political symbol and “the first human rights charter in history”.
• The actual text of the charter, a document in the form of a clay cylinder, inscribed in Akkadian, denounces the king of Babylon deposed by Cyrus, portrays Cyrus as being pleasing to the god Marduk, describes how he improved the lives of the citizens of Babylonia, how he repatriated displaced persons and restored temples and religious sanctuaries.
• We move on to Cyrus`s descendant, Darius the Great (522-486BC), the fourth Achaemenid emperor. An apocryphal story has it that on his deathbed he had recorded for posterity his advice to his son Xerxes. This advice, though possibly historically not proven, contains many useful lessons and could well be digested, emulated and practised by all who aspire to lead or rule the nations of the world:

• “Now that I am passing from this world, there are 25 countries within the Persian empire … you must try to keep these countries as I have done. This can be accomplished by not intervening in their internal affairs and by respecting their religions and cultures. …

  “Never appoint your friends and butlers to government posts, as your friendship alone should suffice them. If you appoint them and they do injustice to people and take advantage of resources, you will not be able to punish them. This is so because they are your friends and you have to, unwillingly or otherwise, observe that friendship. …

  “My other advice to you, never let liars or flatterers near you as both tarnish your dynasty. Abandon the liars without mercy. Never let your ministers dominate people. I have created laws to prevent their dominance in taxation of people. The ministers and the people will be kept apart if you follow these laws. …

  “Continue the educational programmes that I started. Let everyone read and write to improve their understanding. As people comprehend more, you will be able to rule with more confidence. Do not impose religion; always keep in mind that everyone should be free to follow his preferred faith. …

  “Never be judge and plaintiff at the same time. If you have a grievance arrange for an unbiased third party to judge the case. The case will not be judged fairly if the plaintiff serves as the judge.

• “Do not forget generosity. Second to justice, generosity and forgiveness are the best characters of kings. But forgiveness is only applicable to those who have done wrong to you, not to others. If you forgive a person who has harmed someone else then you have done injustice.”

  “After my death, wash my body, wrap it with the shroud I have prepared and put it in a stone coffin. Place the coffin in the grave and leave it uncovered to remind you, whenever you visit my grave, that even your father and the king of 25 countries dies. You will too. This is everyone`s destiny, whether a king of 25 countries or a prickly-bush picker. No one is eternal.

• “I have made these remarks in the presence of others so they know I have given you the above advice prior to my death.”

  Immaculate advice unheeded. Xerxes embarked upon a series of disastrous military campaigns and then returned to his capital cities, to a life of self-indulgence which sapped the strength and vitality of the Achaemenid empire. He was assassinated in 465BC.

5 more annotations...

• relations between both countries needed to be concretised and reflected in enhanced  economic co-operation

• On Nov 25, 1949, as the constituent assembly of India completed its task, the chairman of its drafting committee, Dr B.R. Ambedkar, said: “If we wish to maintain democracy not merely in form, but also in fact, what must we do? The first thing in my judgment we must do is to hold fast to constitutional methods of achieving our social and economic objectives. It means we must abandon the bloody methods of revolution. It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha. When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for those unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the grammar of anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us.”

• On April 12, 2006, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz had claimed in Jakarta that corruption was “one of the biggest threats to development” in the Third World.

  A neo-con author of America’s invasion of Iraq, which he justified to the world with a lie, was explaining in his new avatar how his brand of development was threatened by corruption. It “weakens fundamental systems, it distorts markets, and it encourages people to apply their skills and energies in non-productive ways”, Wolfowitz proclaimed.

  “Civil society, the private sector, borrowing countries and other multilateral banks all have key interests and responsibilities to tackle corruption,” he said. What is this civil society that the World Bank leans on and how does Anna Hazare fit in?

• But like star-crossed lovers, their intimate dalliance portended ill tidings.
• Like a buzzing bee though, the stench would just not go away.
• In just two decades, the appetite of India’s politicians had become so gargantuan that just imagining the number of zeroes was well beyond most everyone.
• Obama was facing his own travails. The economy refused to budge, and the war in Afghanistan was going nowhere.
• In 2010, his party lost control of the US Congress, a result he bewailed as a ‘shellacking’
• many Republicans always regarded Obama as an interloper, and now saw their chance to impose their own vision on the country
• governance almost ground to a halt. The economy went into freefall and the war in Afghanistan from bad to worse.
• A people’s campaign against corruption, led by Anna Hazare, has been bungled by Singh & Co.
• Pranab Mukherjee, accusing Home Minister P. Chidambaram, of having condoned, if not connived in, the looting
• trying to douse flames.
• Congress party, know that if national elections were held now, they will get obliterated.
• With the Taliban so ascendant now, it appears that only Pakistan, perceived as their foremost ally, can help stabilise Afghanistan. Over a decade of relentless warfare has drained the American treasury and sapped the will of its people. If Pakistan were to induce a peaceful Afghanistan where future 9/11s would not be spawned, it would earn the gratitude of many.
• they will not stir the Afghan pot to each other’s detriment
• Singh still retains vestiges of personal credibility to sell his country an accord with Pakistan. And that might just be enough for him to extricate himself from his current quagmire.

12 more annotations...

• Knowledge is power’ is just about the oldest aphorism in the book. And a people with access to knowledge about those that rule over their lives and country — knowledge about how that task is accomplished — are very powerful indeed. So it is that access to information has always been at the heart of the tussle between bureaucracies the world over and the people: the latter want it, the former doesn’t want to cough it up because unsavoury secrets may come to light; accountability may occur.
• In fact, we were the first South Asian country to come up with a law in this regard, the Freedom of Information Ordinance 1997 which was later fine-tuned by the Musharraf government into the Freedom of Information Ordinance 2002.
• However, many have argued that although this did, at least technically, give Pakistanis the legal tool to demand information from governmental bodies, it remains merely that: a technicality. In practice, the legislation is riddled with clauses that allow secrets to remains under wraps.

1 more annotation...