By the time you read this article, the results of the Lok Sabha or parliamentary Elections 2004 may have been announced, however this is being written as India prepares to go to polls for the 14th Lok Sabha, first of the century, from 20th April, a full six months earlier than scheduled, speculation is rife about the outcome of the elections. This study is aimed at a brief analysis of the election scenario and predicts results.

The most distinguishing feature of India's 2004 general elections that sets it apart from all other previous elections is perhaps the fact that all of the major political parties have accepted that the days of fighting, as singular parties are gone. The April/May elections, therefore, which will choose the 14th Lok Sabha since India adopted its constitution and became a republic in 1951, are turning out to be more of a battle of alliances than individual encounters.

A brief History of Indian State Elections

At least once every five years, India's Election Commission supervises one of the largest, most complex exercises of collective action in the world. India's elections involve overseeing an electorate of about 600 million voters who travel to nearly 600,000 polling stations to choose from some 8,950 candidates representing roughly 162 parties. The elections reveal much about Indian society. Candidates span a wide spectrum of backgrounds, including former royalty, cinema superstars, religious holy men, war heroes, and a growing number of farmers....more
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Around the time of partition there were great expectations from the successor armies of the old British Indian Army i.e the Pakistan and the Indian Army! Thus while discussing the boundaries of the to be partitioned province of Punjab an Indian giving evidence before the Punjab Boundary Commission stated “If Pakistan manages in a counterattack to make a 40 miles advance then the defence of India would be affected. True they would lose Bhatinda and Dhuri and Pakistan forces were within measur-

able distance of Ambala, but they (The future Indian Army) do not lose all. Their communications are not upset; they lose so much of the railway line up to the extent of 40 miles, but they still have the main line bringing their supplies at right angle to their forces”. The same person in this discussion gave the Indians a capability of advancing 500 miles inside Pakistan”!

Compare this remark with the later performance of both Indian and Pakistan Armies in actual war which was pathetic in terms of speed of advance or area captured in all three Indo-Pak wars! On a personal level I may add that this subject of phenomenal mediocrity at strategic as well as operational level motivated me to write “The Pakistan Army till 1965”....more
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Is it God's planet or Dante's Inferno? The dwellers of the earth are perplexed. Perpetual war or perpetual peace, what is our destiny? The glory that was America is very much on the wane. Who contributed to the drift? George Bush is not the initiator. He is only a camp-follower of a deranged sensibility, characteristic of the neo-conservative cabal - Rumsfeld, Dick Chenny, Wolfowitz, Perle, Kristol, Shulsky and Schmilt, the designers of US aggressive foreign policy and the perpetrators of wars now being waged.

A revelation was made by Seymour Hersh, in the New York Times that the neo-conservatives, who are actually disciples of the infamous professor of Chicago University, Leo Strauss the godfather of neo-fascists. He is the guru of the intellectual criminals, who were instrumental in advocating carpet bombing, using disinformation, and lies masquerading as intelligence, which led Bush to launch a savage war on Iraq. Hersh wrote: Strauss, a refugee from Nazi Germany, who arrived in the United States in 1937 was trained in the history of political philosophy and became one of the foremost conservative émigré scholars. He is widely known for his argument that the works of ancient philosophers contain deliberately concealed esoteric meaning, whose truths can be comprehended only by a very few, and would be misunderstood by the masses”. The neo-conservatives have taken full control of Bush's mind to interpret for him what Strauss wished to convey. It is essentially Nietzche's 'super man concept', blown up into superpower's awe, grandeur and rage, with insatiable impulse for global domination. This is what empire-builders have always remained obsessed with......more
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We are now well into 57th year of our existence. For most nation states, the age of innocence would have long passed by now. Having shed their baby fats by the time they reach this age, nations are supposed to have developed strong limbs, a healthy body and a powerful brain to command the body and limbs into efficient and productive actions. Also around this age, most nation states would have firmly established where they stand and where they are going.

What happened to us along the way? Where are we headed? Why do we frequently find ourselves between a rock and a hard place? If a civilian rule is the norm for most other nations, why does the Khaki intervene so regularly in Pakistani governance? If the Khaki does intervene, why doesn't it continue for good making it the rule rather than the exception? Why is it that people are, in the end, as fed up with the military rule as its civilian predecessor? If democracy is that universal cure - all medicine for all other contemporary nations, why doesn't it work in Pakistan?

What exactly is the problem?

Pakistan's problem, exactly, is: “The military intervenes regularly and interrupts the civilian governance with a disturbing frequency.”

Why does the Pakistan Army intervene in civilian governance? The simplest answer to this question is because it can.....more
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In the realm of political reality and experience in Pakistan it did not really matter whether the National Security Council Bill was passed by Parliament or not. The creation of NSC was always a fait accompli considering the existence of a docile parliament, a most obedient Prime Minister and a large presence of very obliging and loyal Islamabad loving Mulla elements in the opposition to ensure its passage. Actually the council had become a certainty the moment the MMA had entered into its deal with the government on the Legal Framework Order, In order to keep the semblance of democratic dispensation alive a bill to create the council was formally moved in the National Assembly, cleared within minutes by the relevant standing committee, and to add insult to injury with hardly any debate the bill passed into law within hours of being taken up. Not to be left behind the treasury benches in the Senate, took only three and a half minutes to pass the bill that too while the opposition parties were on a token walk-out protesting some other matter. Resort to such undemocratic bulldozing tactics by the government speaks volumes for the travesty we have made of the parliamentary system and our concept of governance as a whole.

After the gift (due mainly to the support of the so-called religious parties) making LFO part of the constitution and creation of NSC the civil authority in the country has been completely surrendered. It is now aptly clear to the people of Pakistan that whenever under the mysterious and as yet unfathomable “national interest” or “law of necessity” any Chief of the Army Staff feels 'destined to save Pakistan and put democracy on rails and sets himself the task to set the country right he can stride on to the political stage of Pakistan like a colossus, he can do so without fear, favour or hesitation. The big difference is like in the past he no longer needs to ride roughshod over the law of the land, or grossly violate and trample over the Constitution of Pakistan. Some will argue that it is all of academic interest only. When four of them have already done so by violating the constitution so what great difference will it make if NSC is enshrined in law or not, except perhaps a future aspirant can take recourse or protection of decisions of NSC as a military majority is guaranteed by its very composition.....more
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The landslide victory of the Socialist Workers Party (PSOE centre left), in Spain has drastically changed the political landscape of the entire Europe. Defeat of the sitting ruling Popular Party (PP conservative), led by Jose Maria Aznar, will undoubtedly set new dimensions of the Trans-Atlantic relations as well. Mr. Aznar, during the Iraq war, turned out to be the most trusted and loyal ally of the United States. His unflinching support on Iraq enabled the United States towards the accomplishment of its desire - to topple the Saddam regime and occupy the oil wealth of Iraq. The Iraq experience, nevertheless, has hitherto been proved a hard nut to crack for the Americans and are finding themselves ditched deep into a quagmire, from where the escape seems extremely difficult, if not impossible altogether.

It's not difficult to reach a conclusion as to why the ruling Popular Party met with embarrassing defeat. The government had invited masses flak ever since the launch of war against Iraq. The popular public opinion had opposed vehemently Spain's decision to side with the United States and Britain. In November 2003 a Non-governmental Organization conducted an opinion poll, which had suggested that over 70 per cent of the population had opposed Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's decision to cooperate with the United States in the war. The Spanish diplomatic circles in Islamabad, had termed the results of that opinion poll as incorrect and devoid of any public support. The Socialist party will form new government, having won 42 per cent of the vote against the Popular Party's 38 per cent. The voters' turnout was 77.2 per cent, which is all time high in the Spanish electoral history. The PSOE got the biggest number of votes of any party ever, 10.9 million - 2.8 million votes more than in 2000 while PP's vote dropped by 700,000.....more
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Everyone has a word for it: hongbao in China, baksheesh in Arab countries, matabiche in central Africa, propina in Latin America, pots de vin in France, or just plain bribery. If Pakistan were to reduce corruption to the Singapore level, its annual per capita GDP growth rate over the period 1960-85 could have been higher by nearly two percent implying per capita incomes almost fifty percent higher than existing levels. The history of corruption is as old as the history of human civilization. It was a serious problem even in Biblical and classical times, and was found in most periods of history. The growth of government activity and regulation in the modern state increases the opportunities and the temptations for corruption.

Definition of Corruption

The word “corruption” comes from the Latin verb “corrupts” (to break); it literally means broken object. Conceptually, corruption is a form of behaviour, which departs from ethics, morality, tradition, law and civic virtue. The classic definition, followed by the World Bank and Transparency International, views corruption as the use of one's public position for illegitimate private gains. Abuse of power and personal gain, however, can occur in both the public and private domains and often in collusion with individuals from both sectors. Information International in Lebanon therefore adopted the following definition: “Corruption is the behaviour of private individuals or public officials who deviate from set responsibilities and use their position of power in order to serve private ends and secure private gains. Corruption is a term with many meanings. Corruption is the misuse of office for unofficial ends. The catalogue of corrupt includes but is not limited to bribery, extortion, influence peddling, nepotism, fraud and embezzlement. Corruption can influence the allocation of monetary benefits like tax evasion, subsidies, pensions, or unemployment insurance or in-kind benefits like access to privileged schools, medical care, housing and real estate, or ownership stakes in enterprises being privatized.....more
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Great risks and opportunities confront the human civilisation; paradoxically, it is a time of palpable gloom and of tremendous hope. In some respects, we are witnessing the destruction of much that was powerful, the weakening of that which was dominant. Depends on your vantage point; as a student the teacher is now not either all-knowing nor all-controlling; as a child the parents appear inadequate as guides; as a citizen the state is incapable of providing security of yesteryears; as people of medicine the spread of disease outstrips the discovery of cure; the ever lethal technology-fed war machines are no longer providers of security, indeed feeble deterrents for the armed and angry of our planet; the speed of development in many nations is competing with the strides of poverty. Overarching trends of our times, indeed of this century, are the connected crises of politics, of State, of security and of legitimacy.

While globalisation, unresolved conflicts, technological revolutions, rapid urbanization, depleting income levels, the increasing divide between the haves and have-nots and proliferation of small weapons have generated pressures on existing systems and structures that govern human existence, there are two specific factors that have allowed these pressures to generate crisis. One, the inability of the Centres and wielders of power to comprehensively respond to the colossal challenge that these pressures generate, and two the gigantic leap forward in human consciousness that now embraces all that occurs on our planet. The information revolution is singularly responsible for this increase in human consciousness. Yet, the response to this challenge is what this radically enhanced consciousness generates should have been crafted by the human intellect jointly with a value system, has not been forthcoming.....more
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