The Military and Denied Development in the Pakistani Punjab: An Eroding Social Consensus
178
The Military and Denied Development in the Pakistani Punjab: An Eroding Social Consensus
178Hardcover
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783082896 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Anthem Press |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2014 |
| Series: | Anthem Frontiers of Global Political Economy and Development |
| Pages: | 178 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Aasim Sajjad Akhtar is Assistant Professor of political economy at the National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Sohaib Bodla is currently working as a freelance writer and researcher, and as a volunteer for NGOs including the Dutch development organization, Cordaid.
Read an Excerpt
The Military and Denied Development in the Pakistani Punjab
An Eroding Social Consensus
By Shahrukh Rafi Khan, Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, Sohaib Bodla
Wimbledon Publishing Company
Copyright © 2014 Shahrukh Rafi Khan, Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, Sohaib BodlaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78308-298-8
CHAPTER 1
THE MILITARY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN PAKISTAN1
Introduction
The survival and flourishing of civilian rule in Pakistan, which is now and is likely to remain critically important for the foreseeable future, requires a fundamental reordering of the balance of power between state institutions, and between state and society. The military establishment has for the most part dominated a zero-sum game of accumulating power. Political elites have at times collaborated with the military for short-term advantages to the detriment of democracy. Over time more and more power – political but also economic – has been ceded to the military. This power has grown not only during military takeovers, that have given the military formal control of all organs of the state, but also via the pressure the military has exercised during the rule of civilian governments in the shaping of policy and influencing budget allocations. More broadly, military power has grown due to the military's increasing economic autonomy so that its dependence on elected government has lessened over time.
The source of this power has partially been based on allowing the various arms of the military to build business empires and ceding large tracts of real estate to their control. Our premise is that the more economic autonomy the military gains, the less answerable it is to civilian oversight, a key prerequisite to sustainable democracy in Pakistan. Furthermore, the more economic power it gains, the larger the threat democratic oversight represents since the stakes are higher.
This is an application of the theory of coups put forward by Acemoglu and Robinson (2006) where the dominant elite (the military) defends its privileges by co-opting other dominant groups, including feudal, industrial, bureaucratic and judicial elites, to periodically stage coups. Bhave and Kingston (2010) extend this game-theoretic model to cater specifically to Pakistan's unique history. Historical and institutional theories of coups, as summarized by Cohen (1994, 107–117), emphasize political vacuums, ambitious generals, foreign policy concerns, foreign interests and Punjabi domination. Aziz's (2008) thesis is that all the coups in Pakistan, including the first one in 1958, resulted from the military seeking to protect and extend its institutional interests, including the economic.
An essential step in ensuring oversight over the military is exploring and revealing the full nature of its involvement in various sectors of the economy and its ability to use its political muscle to gain economic advantage, hence perpetuating militarism and undermining democracy. This is imperative if there is to be success in gradually paring back the military's special privileges and establishing more equity across the services, civil and military, based on a reasonable assessment of resource constraints.
Senior military officers enjoy an exalted status in society and are accustomed to a very high standard of living. If all perks and subsidies are monetized, the real salary of the top brass is very high. Retirement means a loss of status but also, in many cases, a very big drop in living standards when they reach their mid-fifties – active years for most. This is the crux of the problem that political governments have to deal with. Military foundations such as Fauji, Shaheen and Baharia allow officers to sustain a higher living standard and status into their retirement years, but their survival is dependent on subsidies. Sustaining large welfare programs is inefficient if based on subsidies, unjust if not sanctioned by people's representatives and inequitable if they exceed those of other public functionaries and the constraints imposed by the economy.
Another mechanism for building and sustaining economic dominance by the military is systematic land grabbing, which can be traced back to the colonial period. Under the British, land grants to retired military personnel were considered a means of ensuring loyalty and therefore social peace, particularly in Punjab, which provided the bulk of the military's rank and file after about 1880 (see chapter 2 for more details). This land grab has now been transformed into a social welfare program to ensure a comfortable retirement for officers, particularly senior military officers, and the economic future of their progeny.
While the military is not the only institution in Pakistan that makes a rapacious and disproportionate grab for resources, there are reasons to focus on the military. First, its power means it can be much more effective in grabbing resources. Second, the press at least is willing to shed some light on the rent- seeking behavior of the civil bureaucracy and political elites. The military is much too powerful an institution, and journalists perceive the consequences of crossing generals and brigadiers too severe to scrutinize military affairs rigorously. Third, there is a lack of transparency in military transactions as the relevant data are routinely stated to be confidential. And that is expected to be the end of the story.
The Pakistani military is not unique in its economic interventionism and its command over national resources. However, as we will document, it may exceed others in the extent to which it draws on the national budget. Firat (2005) documents a commercial role played by the Turkish military, and Dobell (2003, 5) claims that only 30 percent of Indonesia's military expenditure comes from the budget, i.e., is subject to parliamentary oversight; the rest comes from commercial enterprises and a great deal of illegal activity. Cloughley (2008, 145) points out that the Indian Army also engages in welfare activities for its soldiers, although it enjoys far less autonomy than its Pakistani counterpart.
In the rest of this chapter, we first review some general conceptions of economic growth and development and then apply them to the Pakistani case. We turn next to the performance of Pakistan's economy under military, compared to civilian, administrations. We show that there is little justification for military intervention on economic grounds. Finally, we reflect on the military mindset that perpetuates its rapacious behavior, creates social resentment and hence gives rise to conflict.
Economic Growth and the Development Process
Poor countries strive to catch up with rich ones, but the task is very challenging. In Pakistan's case, the military adds to this challenge in several obvious and less obvious ways. They are highlighted in this chapter. We start out with some reflections on China – widely depicted as the latest miracle economy – and see what lessons the Chinese experience might offer for an economy featuring an overbearing military burden and numerous political and social conflicts.
Over the past seven decades or so, scholars have identified many factors that might break vicious circles that lead to low economic growth and initiate a high and sustained economic growth trajectory – governance being among the more recent ones. However, as Hausmann, Klinger and Wagner (2008, 5–16) conclude when making a case for growth diagnostics, all approaches to identifying constraints to growth – such as cross- country growth regressions, growth accounting or benchmarking using cross-country surveys, in which countries are ranked on various indicators such as constraints to doing business – are problematic. These methods are dismissed on theoretical grounds and in the case of benchmarking because of inherent problems with the data collection method. However, as indicated by Dixit (2007), growth diagnostics, the latest in the arsenal of such tools, is also problematic on many grounds. Case studies have been more promising; one lesson is that there is no one solution for moving from vicious to virtuous circles, and certainly, countries that have managed to attain and sustain a high economic growth trajectory have had very different points of origin and proceeded in very different ways.
Rostow (1960) reflected on the preconditions for economic take-off. While he ostensibly wrote an anticommunist manifesto, his stages-of-growth framework is not unlike that implicit in Mao Tse-tung's thought. Rostow describes preconditions for take-off as the critical stage prior to economic take-off. These preconditions include a change in attitude to fundamental and applied science and training to operate in disciplined organizations. Other preconditions include the development of financial, political and social institutions. Institutional development needs to be accompanied by appropriate social and physical infrastructure (ports, docks, roads, railways) and management skills.
Mao Tse-tung's (1968, 5, 67) characterization of a take-off would be quantification and then a qualitative leap, where the quantification is the precondition and the take-off the qualitative leap. Mao Tse-tung also refers to internal and external conditions, with the former, as the precondition, being more critical (1968, 28) and external conditions, such as a favorable international environment, possibly acting as a catalyst. A take-off, or whatever one calls the phenomenon (catch-up growth), is an empirical reality in the case of China and perhaps other emerging economies like Brazil and India. This was certainly the case in Japan, Korea and Taiwan, and Malaysia and Thailand before them.
Mao appears to be right in suggesting that qualitative changes matter greatly, but we do not know as much about what causes them and why, at least relative to the quantitative steps that are taken first. It is also the case, as we noted earlier, that the critical internal and external conditions vary significantly by country. We speculate in this chapter on what the critical internal conditions are likely to be in Pakistan's case.
We first make a qualification given our concern with social justice. A take-off is not a necessary condition for generalized wellbeing, as we are currently seeing in China and India, although it is a sufficient condition. A take-off can create opportunities for distribution and pressures for it. The more likely story is that prosperity spreads because people fight for a larger share of the larger pie (e.g. worker strikes in China); or the state engages in distribution because of the likely social conflict and other constraints to growth if they do not (e.g., China addressing lagging rural income with infrastructure). Nor do workers necessarily wait for a sustained take off. Bangladeshi ready-made garment workers have been engaged in a protracted struggle for increased wages from a sector that contributes over about four-fifths of total merchandize export earnings. Just as nations have to struggle and develop despite the odds, workers often face a similar struggle.
In the context of Mao's philosophy, among the very favorable internal conditions are a sound administration and managerial capacity and strong citizen identification with a common national project. One of the authors of this book made a trip to China to give a series of lectures on economic development in the summer of 2009, during the peak of the swine flu pandemic, at the Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU). It was strange to be lecturing on economic development in a country that one really should be learning from. In fact, one lesson, pertaining to administrative and managerial capacity, came very early on in the trip even before reaching the hotel from the airport. On disembarking in Islamabad, Pakistan, en route to China, passengers were greeted with a large sign suggesting that they report to the Ministry of Health if they were coming from a country where the flu originated or where the incidence was high. The best that can be said for this public-health initiative was that the sign was prominent and difficult to miss. It seems unlikely, however, that many passengers would have reported to the Ministry of Health the next day. Two days later, when the plane landed in China, the public-health precaution could not have been more different. When the plane came to a complete stop, passengers were asked to remain seated. Rapidly and carefully, a team of public-health officials electronically scanned each passenger's temperature. Seat numbers of those with a temperature above a certain threshold were noted, and these passengers were later subjected to further tests. We learned that day that the mayor of New Orleans was quarantined for a week in a Shanghai hotel because he was deemed to represent a risk to public health. In the case of BLCU, foreign faculty members were not allowed to be exposed to students for one week, during which time sightseeing tours were organized (to which families, if in tow, were also invited, board and lodging covered).
Other experiences also revealed a very high level of public health alert and the capacity to take preventive measures across the board. Taxi drivers routinely opened windows if a passenger sneezed, suggesting an effective public health campaign. In Qingdao, 882 km south of Beijing on the Yellow Sea, a family member's sore throat bloomed into a cold. Medicine for a cold was procured from a traditional medicine store by looking at a visual card showing apparent cold symptoms. A hotel receptionist with English language skills was asked to read the dosage. Very shortly after, a public-health official knocked at our hotel room door for a temperature check.
All this precaution for public health was very visible to a foreigner in Chinese society without knowledge of the language. More might have been gleaned with access to the language and media. Even so, the level of preparedness regarding public health, both at the official level and in terms of the diffusion of knowledge, possibly via media campaigns, was impressive.
Perhaps it is the administrative and managerial ability of the communist party that generates the observed level of efficiency. However, as observers and interested readers of the Chinese scene, it also appears that there is a broad identification with what one might view as a common project to catch up with the West as soon as possible. Insofar as development is a collective action issue, this critical ingredient for a collective action to be realized seems to be present in China.
A country as vast as China is inevitably complex; many people are shabbily treated and human rights appear to be trampled on. But there seems to be a larger story of a country on the move, a country that possesses adequate administrative and managerial capacity, a country where there is broad identification with a national project.
These two critical ingredients may be sufficient to trigger a virtuous circle by inducing other ingredients that add to the snowballing impact of enhanced economic prosperity. For example, one way to look at the current Chinese miracle is that, historically, the administrative and managerial ability delivered reasonable quality physical and social infrastructure as a base. That this happened was no accident; it was systematically planned for in the dialectical vision of economic development and balanced growth that Mao Tse-tung (1968, 129–130) propounded in 1951. Heavy industry was to be the core, but it required the simultaneous development of agriculture and the associated light industry. Agriculture would provide the raw materials and markets and enable the capital accumulation needed for heavy industry. In turn, industry would provide materials needed to continue to boost agriculture such as heavy machinery and transportation equipment, fertilizer, equipment for water conservancy, power, fuel, and building materials for infrastructure.
A managerial decision to catch up with the West then put uniquely Chinese incentives into place to trigger prosperity (Rodrik, 2010); again, very consistent with Mao's advocacy of adaptation based on local conditions (Mao, 131). The original source of the organizational and managerial ability might have been the communist party, which is still a force, but this ability is widely diffused; visiting any factory or observing the cleanliness and efficiency of the subway systems in Beijing or Shanghai makes this evident.
Finally, to sustain prosperity and truly catch up with the West, a country is required to embody an endogenous technological capacity in society and the economy; this way, it can keep moving up the technological ladder (Chang 2010). However, as the Japanese, Korean and Taiwan experience shows, this is not automatic but planned for with an extensive technology and training policy (Gallagher and Shafaeddin 2010). Now, it is also evident that the Chinese are using their newfound resources and administrative and managerial ability to invest in creating an endogenous technological capacity; this includes drawing back expatriate talent (LaFraniere 2010; Zweig 2006).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Military and Denied Development in the Pakistani Punjab by Shahrukh Rafi Khan, Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, Sohaib Bodla. Copyright © 2014 Shahrukh Rafi Khan, Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, Sohaib Bodla. Excerpted by permission of Wimbledon Publishing Company.
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Table of Contents
Preface; 1. The Military and Economic Development; 2. Punjab’s State–Society Consensus on the Military’s Dominance and Economic Role; 3. Research Design, Method, Institutional Issues and Scope of the Military’s Land Acquisitions; 4. The Military’s Agrarian Land Acquisitions: High Handedness and Social Resentment; 5. From Social Resentment to Social Resistance; 6. Bahria Town: A Military-Related Real Estate Venture; 7. The Military as Landlord in the Pakistani Punjab: Case Study of the Okara Farms; 8. Guardians No More? The Breakdown of the Consensus; Glossary; IndexWhat People are Saying About This
“This is a pioneering study of the military’s appropriation of land to enrich retired servicemen and, more importantly, strengthen its economic domination as a corporate entity.” —Tariq Rehman, Beaconhouse National University, Lahore
“This engaging, grounded book captures the essence of military influence and control throughout Pakistan’s economy and doesn’t shy away from exploring everyday acts of social resistance. Arguing that the military is in large part responsible for ‘development denied,’ this book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand politics, economics and many of the reasons behind the social upheavals in Pakistan today.” —Anita M. Weiss, University of Oregon
“Analytically incisive, the authors boldly reveal how growing resistance to military authority in rural Punjab is eroding the army’s institutional power and challenging its sacrosanct status in Pakistan’s politics.” –Kavita Khory, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts