Shia' woes in Pakistan

By Samuel Baid

Shias in Pakistan continue to suffer persecution for their opposition to Gen Ziaul Haq's Sunni-centric Islamisation programme twenty-three years ago. Gen Pervez Musharraf's loudly trumpeted measures to roll back the politics of Sectarian conflicts unleashed by Zia have not borne fruit. In fact, Shias never faced the kind of intelligentsia cleansing they have been facing since October 1999 when Musharraf staged his military coup. Since October 1999 when Musharraf staged his military coup. Since then hundreds of doctors, lawyers, scholars, teachers, students and holders of high Government offices have been gunned down by the very same organizations who grew under Zia's quiet-patronage.

It is ironic that Shias, whose fellow-believer Mohammd Ali Jinnah created Pakistan, should be treated as aliens in their own land. The Sipah-e-Sahaba emerged on the scene in 1985, reportedly with Gen Zia's blessings, to demand removal of Shias from Islam and from key Government jobs. This treatment was given to Ahmediyyas in 1974: they were declared non-Muslims; eased out of Government jobs, especially the armed forces and were told Pakistan was not for them. Thousands of them fled Pakistan. Ironic again, because Ahmediyyas had played an important role in the creation of Pakistan and also in the Pakistani invasion of Kashmir in 1947, Mr Jinnah had great faith in them. Shias concentrate in Karachi, southern parts of Punjab and Gilgit and Baltistan, which Pakistan calls Northern Areas. Bohra and Khoja communities of the Shia sect had migrated to the Karachi from India especially from Mumbai and Gujarat. They were very influential businessmen. Mr Jinnah belonged to the Khoja community. In Punjab they are generally a land-owning class. In Northern areas they are in a majority but live as serfs to outsiders from Pakistan.

The Shia-Sunni differences, which originated in the early years of Islam did not really divided the two communities in Pakistan until three important developments in Pakistan and around it took place. The first was the military coup of Gen Ziaul Haq in Pakistan in July 1977. The second was the Islamic revolution in Iran, which saw the end of monarchy and its replacement with Islamic leaders, led by Ayatullah Khomeni. The Sunni would, including Saudi Arabia, was alarmed by declarations from Iran that this Islamic revolution would be exported. The third was the Iran-Iraq war, which further polarised Shias and Sunnis in the Muslim world with its worst manifestation in Pakistan. The Afghan war in the 1980s also added to the Shia-Sunni stand off.

Until these developments, Shias and Sunnis lived in perfect harmony in Pakistan. If you look at the matrimonial columns of Karachi's Urdu newspapers, you'll notice a practice of Shia-Sunni matrimonial alliances. But once Zia started his Islamisation programme this practice began fading. Also, until Zia came the intelligence agencies, particularly the ISI and the IB were not known to play a role in promoting sectarian hatred. Till then they were known to be working against politicians and political parties and even for creating ethnic rifts as in the case of Bengalis. Their sectarian role was at least not publicly visible.

Gen Ziaul Haq laid the foundation of perennial sectarian unrest and bloodshed in Pakistan. He was annoyed when Shias opposed his Islamisation programme, which totally ignored the Shia jurisprudence. He was forced to concede their demands about their own Zakat and Ushr.

In the wake of the Iran-Iraq war and the Soviet action in Afghanistan, Pakistan was receiving huge amount of money and weaponry from the United States and European countries to produce Islamic militants to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan on behalf of the US. The Pak military and the ISI used these funds and weapons to produce Sunni militants (rather terrorists) to carry out their programmes beyond Afghanistan. The US didn't mind, as it didn't trust Shias because of their leanings towards Iran. In 1986 Zia connived at the massacre of Turi Shias in Parachinar by Afghan rebels because they didn't want any Shia pockets on the weapon supply route from Pakistan to Afghanistan. The Pakistani Press played down this massacre while the "free" US and European Press ignored it. Turi leader Allama Ariful Hussaini, who was also Shias' national leader, was shot dead in Peshawar a few days before Zia's death in August 1988. Zia's right hand man Gen Fazle Haq, who was the Governor of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) then and also the main drug runner in the province, was suspected to be behind this assassination. Gen Zia had started a diabolic plan of cleansing the Northern Areas of Shia majority in 1988 by infiltrating Pakistanis from Punjab and NWFP. Hundreds of Shias were butchered, their women dishonoured and their property was looted. The Army accused these poor Shias of stocking Iranian arms in mosques. In fact the Army was alarmed when local Shias began demanding civil rights. During the Afghan war Pakistan had produced Taliban, who are fanatic Sunnis.

They used to give shelter to the terrorists belonging to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a by-product of Sipah-e-Sahaba. These terrorists would kill Shias in Pakistan and flee to Afghanistan. Their activities increased when the Army decided to get rid of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The Lashkar had once unsuccessfully targeted Mr Sharif. The Lashkar was hand-in-glove with MQM (Haqiqi), which enjoyed the support of the Army and the ISI.

But Shias did not face persecution so badly as they have been facing in past three years despite all the claims of Musharraf to be fighting sectarian terrorists. It was his Government that released anti-Shia terrorist Maulana Azam Tariq from jail to help him become members of the National Assembly last year. He was killed in October 6 in Islamabad. He was treated as a National hero.

That since July this year, close to 100 Shias have been killed, mostly in Balochistan, speaks of Musharraf's insincerity about his compaign against terrorism.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in its 2001 annual report observed that Pakistan religious minorities were being stalked and persecuted adding "nearly 1000 people died each year in Pakistan during 1990s religiously or ethnically through violence....... the 1990s saw the 'serge of the religious militancy.'

India's tryst with full employment

By Dr Navin Chandra Joshi

The unemployment situation in the country is going to worsen as there has been very little growth of employment in the policy has been in favour of more growth rather than of employment. Economic reforms during the last ten years or so are said to have undermined employment potential.

Moreover, the implications of liberalisation for employment are not too clear except for the perception that deregulation has helped to generate new employment in the services sector as also somewhat in the unorganised sector. No doubt, growth of productivity in agriculture and industry leads to increase in employment in the services sector but then such productivity increases have not taken place.

Unfortunately, economic growth is expected to be less and not more labour-intensive in the years to come. In almost all sectors, the employment elastically has fallen and is expected to remain at that level until 2005. The major exception is agriculture on which the Planning Commission has pinned its hopes. Surely, any shortfall in growth will mean a worsening of open unemployment a continuation of the trend that has surfaced at the employment exchanges.

It is true that the elasticity of employment creation to gross domestic product (GDP) growth declined between 1980-1990 and is now projected to remain at more or less the same level over the next few years by the end of 2005 or 2006. It is thus not clear how the country will achieve its 10 million a year employment growth target of the Tenth Plan.

In common language, the elasticity of employment to growth measures the percentage increase in jobs created for every percentage growth of GDP. The higher the elasticiy, the more labour intensive one can expect the GDP growth to be.

If an average annual employment growth of 2.6 to 2.8 per cent takes place with an economic growth of 5.6 per cent per annum during the Tenth Plan (2002-07), there can be near full employment. However, this will be contingent upon the attainment of a little higher average rate of GDP than achieved in the past, derived to a large extent from sectors and areas which are inherently more employment-intensive. Infact, the growth rate of GDP required for full employment by the year 2007 should be between 6-6.5 per cent as assessed by economists.

Promotion of self-employment and re-orientation of skills to suit labour market conditions of demand have been incorporated by the Government in its strategy for obtaining a higher rate of employment growth leading to the goal of full employment.

The backlog of unemployment at the beginning of the Eighth Plan (1992-97) was 230 lakh (170 lakh unemployed and 60 lakh severely underemployed). The last round of National Sample Survey Organisation pointed out that 62 per cent unemployed are in rural areas and 38 per cent in urban areas. Presently, the number of educated job seekers is 220.4 lakh, while uneducated job seekers is 139.9 lakh. Thus, the total number of job seekers comes to 360.3 lakh.

Ironically, employment is a subject India's policy-makers would rather avoid. The Government's explanation for the shortfalls in achievement is that the growth estimates on which the targets were based were over-optimistic.

Trade unions, however, have a different story to tell, Cutting across party lines, from the BJP's right wing Bharatiya Majdoor Sangh (BMS) to the left-wing CPM's CITU, union leaders claim that in many sectors reforms have only provided an excuse for employers to shift to employing contractual instead of organised labour. The numbers dished out in the Labour Ministry's annual report make a mockery of the Government's oft-repeated commitment to achieve full employment by the turn of the last century.

For two decades ending 1991, the per annum growth in employment was 2.2 per cent, when actually it should have been around 10 per cent which has been the average rate of growth in the past years. The likely additional number of persons seeking employment during the five-year period 1992-97 was estimated at 35 million with the another 36 million during the Ninth Plan period. Together with the backlog of 23 million and assuming that no jobs have been lost in the years gone by, a staggering 94 million jobs need to be created at the rate of 12 million additional jobs a year.

The employment potential in India's organised sector is not much. Even in the period of rapid industrial growth, job opportunities in both the public and the private sectors increased at a slow pace during the 1980s. The growth rate in employment was 1.5 per cent and 1.25 per cent in public and private sectors respectively. Therefore, the objective of full employment would call for more than doubling the growth rate in Indian economy. Now ever since liberalisation policy was implemented, improvement in growth rate became all the more necessary.

Developed countries are keen to export their unemployment to the developing countries and more specifically to India. For example, the level of unemployment in the USA is about 6 per cent whereas in the European Community it is 11 per cent. In Japan, unemployment rate is much lower at 2.8 per cent. As such, all these countries would try to make a significant dent in unemployment by policies that would be harmful for Indian workers. Also, in the wake of new economic reforms there is a possibility of mass unemployment in the public sector consequent upon large-scale closure of loss-making units and even privatisation of some of them.

Moreover, restructuring of Indian companies taking place on a large-scale would necessitate domestic industries to compete with global giants and this could be successful by deriving benefits of economies of large-scale. Therefore, inevitably rationalisation of workforce is bound to take place.

Clearly, like many other problems faced by developing economies, any mechanism for generating employment in India will have to be innovative, unorthodox and bold, while staying in tune with our culture and traditions. Experience nearer home holds far greater promise. Japan has today become a world power by effectively networking the talent of its people. China, on the other hand, has made halting progress because of ideological ambiguities which have rendered its efforts sub-optimal. The impressive performance is that of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and some others in the neighbourhood.

Now that India has embarked on its policy of economic and structural reforms, the Government should not miss the opportunity of putting in place a working framework for achieving the goal of full employment. Even though it has been a never-ending refrain of the left that as new technology inevitably means fewer jobs on the factory floor, more open economy will lead to a fall in total employment. However, the evidence from other countries suggests that it does not lead to reduction in employment but only changes the pattern of employment generation.

Finally, it is the small - scale sector and self-employment schemes that can really deliver the goods and remove the major part of unemployment in the country. Our plans have to be so tailored that a vast network of small industries is created and set up by young entrepreneurs. They may also be encouraged to take up self-employment in various activities-both manufacturing and non-manufacturing. Needless to say that our educational system has to change in favour of vocationalisation to a much larger extent. More than anything else, the country needs to launch a vast number of infrastructure projects.

Hence, our priority in investment pattern has to change in favour of creating infrastructural facilities and for this purpose, if certain projects of long-gestation period have to be withdrawn, that must be done. It needs to be recognised that the Keynesian thesis of providing jobs to people for economic growth is very much relevant in a country like India. Even if there are not many jobs to go round, as per the thesis, people must be engaged in digging up holes and filling them up again.

By doing so, they will have some income and it will then have a multiplier effect by accelerating the pace of growth in national income. This is only to highlight the point that creating employment opportunities is the starting point for triggering up the economic growth process to the desired level. Both should go side by side.

PTI Feature