5

ESSAY WRITING
Writing an essay takes time: time to gather information,
determine a topic, decide what directions you want to take, organize
your evidence, write the first draft, revise and edit the next draft or
drafts, and then prepare a final copy that says clearly and
convincingly what you want to say. You will be surprised at the
difference taking your time makes in the quality of your writing.
Time taken to plan an essay saves time staring at a blank sheet of
paper with no clear ideas in mind. The guide below outlines a writing
process.
Thinking about an essay topic
Before you start to write, study your essay topic carefully; be
sure you understand it and know what you're supposed to be doing
with it. Here's a sample essay topic:
Describe the image of women presented in television advertising. Do
you think it is fair or unfair?
Understand the topic: If you've done sufficient research, you
should have a fairly good understanding of the topic you have been
given or have chosen. Sometimes, as in this example, the factual
content of an essay topic will be fairly simple; at other times, you'll
have to read the material very carefully to be sure that you
understand it fully.
Be sure you know what you are to do with the topic. In the
topic given above you're asked to do two things: describe the image
of women presented in TV ads, and give your own opinion about its
fairness.
These two processes are different. When you describe
something, you don't judge it. In planning your essay, you would
first work at gathering evidence showing how women are portrayed
in TV ads. Only when you have presented as complete and fair a
picture as is possible in a short essay will you be able to argue
convincingly the second part of the essay topic: your personal
evaluation of the image.
In the final version of your essay you might not present the
materials in this order. You might decide to start your essay with
your evaluation and then go on to support it with evidence. But in
thinking about a topic, act like a scientist: always put together the
 6
evidence first, and pass the judgments only after you've surveyed
your collection of data. If an assigned topic seems ambiguous, vague,
or too broad, make clear your interpretation of the topic before you
try to address it. Sometimes you'll find a vague word or phrase in an
essay topic and you will be forced to decide what the term really
means. This is not a trick; rather it's an invitation to think carefully
about a topic. Watch out for phrases like "more likely," "better,"
"desirable," and so on. Think through the idea: Better than what?
Desirable for what? In our example you would probably have to
decide what you mean by "fair": impartially accurate, presenting all
sides, helpful, or what? Make sure that you understand the direction
words in the topic: Every essay question or topic has a controlling
idea expressed usually in one or two key words. Each of these words
has a precise meaning. In the previous example. you saw what the
word "describe" meant precisely. Here are a few more common
direction words:
• Compare. Examine a set of items and find the resemblances
among them. You may mention differences, but stress
similarities.
• Contrast. Stress the differences.
• Define. Give a short, clear statement of meaning.
• Discuss. Present various sides and views of a matter, give a
detailed answer.
• Evaluate. Appraise something. Do not simply present the
facts, but say why some appear more important, more valid
than others.
• Justify. Show the grounds for any judgments you've made.
• Summarize. Give the main points or facts in short form.
Leave out all details or illustrations.
• Trace. Describe a sequence of events or development from
the point of origin.
Directions may come in many other forms: single words like
"analyse," "criticize," and so on, or whole phrases like "Make up
your mind whether...," "Differentiate among..." Be sure you
understand what they mean before you begin to write.
Brainstorming
Your first step in the actual writing of an essay is to note
down quickly all the ideas that come into your head as you think
about the topic. Write everything down; don't pass judgments on
 7
your own ideas yet. Something that looks unimportant at the outset
may lead you to think of something very important later on. This list
is for your eyes only and provides an invaluable reference as you
start to write the first draft of your essay. The ideas you write down
need not be in any order. This process is also called free writing or
prewriting.
Let's brainstorm on the sample topic given above:
• Older women are wise: women helping men in laundromat,
Mrs. Olson
• Men experts who have to help women solve problems like
"ring around the collar"
• Women concerned only/mostly with family and floor wax
• Women take care of themselves for men who possess them
"She takes Geritol; I think I'll keep her"
• Some non-stereotyped woman driving Porsche, jockey, oil
engineer
• All professional women very young and beautiful
Continue brainstorming on your own. Add precise details
names of products, actors, actresses. Keep adding to the list
whenever an idea flashes through your head at work, while reading,
after dinner while you're doing dishes. Don't erase anything! You're
not judging yet. You're amassing a store of information and ideas
that you can draw on later.
Formulating a thesis.
Now you're ready to start deciding the direction of your
essay.
Begin by testing different possibilities. Here are three
possible directions to take our women- in-TV-ads topic:
Although there are some positive images of women on TV,
in general the ads present an unfair view of women as dependent,
shallow materialists. While the TV ads are sometimes annoying in
their shallowness, they reflect fairly accurately the concerns of a
majority of American women. Since ads have a powerful influence
beyond simply selling products, it is only fair that they be used to
improve the position of women by showing their strengths as well as
their weaknesses.
See how the point of your essay, which you're trying to fix,
takes time to decide on. It is not just a simple restatement of a
 8
question. In fact, you can try to write out a statement of purpose
without repeating the vocabulary of a question:
Most women find television ads demeaning and frustrating
because they depict American women as dependent, shallow
materialists.
Just be sure that the statement is a good response to the
topic.
Next, tentatively decide on a direction to take. Check your
brainstorming lists of ideas and facts to see which of the statements
you've written down has the most support in the evidence you've
gathered. Which of the directions you've explored sounds most
interesting or convincing, or for which you have gathered the most
ideas? This becomes the point you're going to make in your essay,
the reason you want someone to read what you've written: your
possible thesis.
Remember, however, that as you continue to write the essay,
new ideas will come to you. You wrote the original thesis statement;
you can change it at any time and must if you find that you can no
longer support your original position. (This changing in your thesis
may start as early as the initial organizing of evidence, taken up in
the next section.)
You may end up writing an essay that says just the opposite
of what you started with; this happens, so don't let it worry you.
However, writing out a thesis statement in the early stage of writing
lets you start organizing your materials efficiently.
Organizing your evidence
Remember that evidence is fact, not opinion! Go over your
brainstorming notes and see whether you can group the mess of
ideas, examples, and questions into categories. In coming up with
your thesis, you probably started this process, thinking about which
examples would support your thesis and which might go against it.
You can use different coloured pens to underscore in your notes
those ideas that go together: examples of women as shallow all
underlined in red, for example. Or you may cut up your notes and
arrange them on a table top, like playing cards, trying to find a
pattern. As you sort your notes, think about the points you want to
stress in your essay.
In a 500- or 1000-word paper you're not going to be able to
make more than two or three points. Each of these points must be
supported with evidence (facts), and defended against possible attack
from a reader who thinks differently from you. Initially, think in
 9
terms of one major point to a paragraph. You may end up with
something like this:
• Women are often portrayed as simple-minded in TV ads.
• The few women who are shown as intelligent are
unconvincing.
• To be fair to women, ads should often portray them more
naturalistically, as more men are portrayed.
Keep in mind that you're writing a short essay, not the final word on
the image of women in ads. For a short paper, select a limited set of
ideas and the best possible examples to illustrate them. Other ideas
and examples will have to be discarded, but don't destroy any notes
until you've finished the paper; if you change your thesis, you may
need to go back to the notes for fresh ideas.
Writing the rough draft
Now you are ready to start composing the first version of the
actual essay. Don't begin by constructing a magnificent introductory
paragraph. The chances are that by the time you finish writing the
essay, it will no longer fit what you've said!
On the other hand, don't worry if you find it hard to begin
writing. Start with the second paragraph. Or write "Dear Nick" at the
top of the page and pretend you're writing a letter to an intelligent
and sympathetic friend who really wants to know about this subject.
Write anything, in fact, to get started -- even an elaborate
introductory paragraph that you're prepared to throw out if
necessary!
Professional writers often have a hard time starting a piece
of writing: one author sits in front of a typewriter and does not allow
himself to get up, even to go to the bathroom, unless he has written
at least four sentences. Then, if he has to interrupt his work, he can
pick it up again easily. The successful writer Gene Fowler writes:
"Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at the blank piece of paper
until the drops of blood form on your forehead." Solution? Get
something down so that the sheet is no longer blank!
As you compose the rough draft, remember that it is rough.
Concentrate on getting your ideas down in some logical order. Don't
worry about grammar or spelling or even final organization: that is
another process -- revising and editing. The rough draft is your first
effort at composing your ideas, not the final version of your essay.
"The idea," says novelist Bernard Malamud, "is to get the pencil
moving quickly."
 10
Revising and editing
Once you have composed a rough draft, you're ready to
revise and edit it -- two separate and important steps that most
writers find they work on at the same time. When you revise, you are
looking for ways to improve the content; when you edit, you are
looking for technicalities of writing (grammar, spelling, and so
forth).
Do yourself a favour: make a clean copy of your rough draft
before revising and editing the essay. It makes both tasks easier. If
you are composing on a computer, make a printout at this point. If
you compose by hand, make a neatly written copy. Why? A clean
copy allows you to see everything more clearly. Problems in
organization of ideas or of facts supporting those ideas will stand out
more clearly during revising. And problems of sentence structure,
punctuation, even spelling, become more apparent during editing.
Revising for content. On the clean copy of your draft, first
check the sense of what you've said. Have you made the point you
set out to prove, or have you gone off into other areas? Have you
repeated yourself? Have you made a point, yet not backed it up with
evidence? Have you put in unnecessary evidence for a very simple
point? Are things in the right order? Does everything you say make
sense? Try writing a brief outline of your essay to see if it all hangs
together. Look again at the introductory paragraph: does it really
introduce your paper? Try to avoid editing the paper until you are
satisfied with what you've said.
Revising for shape. An important aspect of revising a rough
draft is making sure your essay has "shape." By that I mean the
simple, classical pattern of a beginning, a middle, and an end. Just
about every piece of writing, short or long, needs these three
elements. They insure that your reader understands your thesis (main
point, central or controlling idea, or theme they all mean the same
thing) and then becomes convinced that it is an interesting or valid
one. Here is one way to look at this three-part pattern:
Beginning: Say what you are going to do. State your thesis (this
is the main topic or single general idea of the entire essay).
Middle: Do it. Develop your thesis, discuss it and support it with
evidence. This is the "body" of the essay.
End: Note that you have done it. Recognize your thesis and
evidence for it and state your conclusions.
 11
You will probably follow this pattern quite mechanically in
your first two or three essays. In later thinking and writing you will
become increasingly subtle as you experiment with expanding on,
varying, and enriching this pattern.
Revising for style. As you revise your rough draft, think
carefully about your audience, the person who is going to read what
you are writing. For most college or university essays it is, quite
frankly, the professor. You would write the same ideas quite
differently in a letter to your grandmother or in a memo to your boss.
However, please do not fall prey to the misconception that intelligent
writing is pompous writing. It is not. Here is one way to picture your
audience:
Consider that your paper is going to be read by a small
group of knowledgeable peers who are interested in your ideas and
are willing to be convinced by them, given the information they need
about them.
Again, writing to convince is preferable to writing to
impress.
One rule of good style is that when you revise, think about
whether or not you can explain something more clearly, in simpler
language, or with even clearer evidence backing up your ideas. If
you can, go with the simpler version. Another rule of good style is to
use varied words, an active or vivid noun, or just the right adjective
or adverb. As you read and write more, you will be automatically
building your vocabulary. Use only words for which you know the
meanings. As you add words to your vocabulary be sure that you are
using them accurately, precisely.
Editing for form. Once you're satisfied with the essay as an
essay (this may mean that you've had to do another draft copy)
review it very carefully for technical errors: spelling, grammar,
subject- verb agreements, adjectives used as adverbs, and so on.
Know your own weaknesses: if you can't spell "occurrence," look it
up. If you know that you sometimes leave the "s" off verbs, double-
check for that point. Don't just make a stab at corrections; be sure
you understand what you're doing. Keep asking questions until you
do!
Final copy
Type the final copy yourself. The retyping gives you a
chance to make fine adjustments to things you didn't notice before.
Proofread a hard copy of the final draft very carefully. Proofreading
is easier if you put the paper aside for at least a few hours before
 12
rereading it. Do not hesitate to make corrections if you find errors;
it's your paper, and you have the right to change anything you've
written. However, don't panic and make unnecessary corrections.
Decide at some point that the paper is finished.
A Final Note: These notes on writing an essay are not
something to be read once and mastered. Return to these pages often
for ideas and guidance. If you are at a sticking place in your writing,
the guidelines can help you identify what points of the process are
giving you problems and then find ways to solve them. For example,
are you stuck on what to write about? You may need more
prewriting or you may need to reformulate your thesis into a more
workable one. Are you not satisfied with your second draft? You
may need to go back and expand on your rough draft or review the
ideas for revising again.
 13

National Accountability Bureau

Pakistan is the first country of the world, which came into
being on the basis of Islamic Ideology. Her liberator Quaid-e-Azam
wanted to make Pakistan a prosperous state in which equality of right
will rule indiscriminately. Unfortunately, the Quaid died just after
one year of birth of Pakistan. After his death, no body bore such
titanic capabilities and worth who could fill Quaid’s vacant place and
to manage properly the new-born state. The principal situation
became worse by the assassination of Liqaut Ali Khan, the first
prime minister of Pakistan. Under this anarchy of leadership some
times martial law ruled over the country and sometimes corrupt
politicians took the reins of the country in their hands. So nepotism,
corruption and bribery flourished with full vigour especially during
the last two decades where three national assemblies were dissolved
on the charges of corruption by the two consecutive presidents of
Pakistan. But 12th October 1999 as a dark day in the history of
Pakistan ever remembered when the elected prime minister of
Pakistan issued order to hi-jack the plane. The chief of army-staff
was on board. In the nutshell, the army once again took over control
the country and the chief of army staff became her chief executive.
In his first address to the nation, the chief executive alluded
to those problems, which have dragged the country to its lowest ebb.
He, in his address enumerated a seven point agenda to steer Pakistan
out of the present economic, social, and administrative crisis. He
gave a corruption. According to Lord Acton, “power tends to corrupt
and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” To quote Shakespeare,
“corruption, win more than honesty.” Edmund Burk believes that a
corrupt influence is a perennial spring of decay and disorder.
Unfortunately, corruption has spread to every part of the
governmental apparatus. We, the Pakistanis, became powerless
prisoners of the system within which we must operate. The chief
executive promised in his speech to resolve and to carry out across-
the-board and transparent accountability in contrast to earlier such
attempts which could not survive the malignancy of ill-will. It was
the oldest demand of the countrymen to account such and every men
either a politician or a bureaucrat. The great responsibility to guide
and steer the nation out of the abyss of corruption, nepotism,
malpractices and abuse or misuse of power, was vested in the
National Accountability Bureau, with Lt. Gen. Syed Muhammad
Amjad as its first chairman. A fair and across-the-board
 14
accountability is not only the need of the hour for Pakistan but it is
also the popular sentiment of every patriotic citizen of the country.
Today most of the problems being confronted by our country are a
fall out of corruption. To eradicate corrupt practices, National
Accountability Bureau has been established through a Presidential
Ordinance for a free, transparent and across-the board accountability.
NAB will take effective measures for detection, investigation,
prosecution and speedy disposal of cases involving corruption,
corrupt practices, misuse or abuse of power, misappropriation of
property and kickbacks etc. and for matter connected and accidental
there to.
There are five main points set out for National
Accountability Bureau (NAB).
The first and foremost point is to eradicate the corruption
from top level to bottom from all public offices and institutions. The
top level management has corrupted so its lower management
encouraged to see the top level corruption. They also with full sped
feel in the abyss of corruption. They at one side piled a large volume
of wealth and property by their or by their – relatives name and on
the other side decayed the institution in which they worked. Almost
all corporations and big national institutions were running under a
fiscal loss. The people of Pakistan every year bore more than
hundred billion rupees loss only to run these corporations and
institutions.
The second priority of the National Accountability Bureau is
to hold accountable all those persons accused of corrupt practices.
People of lower salary and of public-offices in a few year have
become multi-millionaire. A large amount of this money is used to
purchase villas, Bungalows, commercial property and cars. But some
amount is also hide by the property to the names of the nearest kith
and kin.
National accountability Bureau will provide effective
measures for the detection, investigation prosecution and speedy
disposal of cases involving corruption. The bureau can detain any
accuse upto ninety days. The accused cannot get bail during the
detention.
The bureau has the power and right to detain the loan
defaulters. It had succeeded to recover the outstanding amounts from
loan defaulters of the various banks. These loans were taken from
different national and private banks. On the fictitious projects. The
 15
loan defaulters even did not return the instalment of the loans before
the bureau.
The bureau has legal authority to recover the state money
and other assets from those persons who have misappropriated such
assets.
One-year of the present regime has elapsed and the
achievements of the bureau are somewhat satisfactory. No doubt, the
speed of the accountability is not satisfactory and it cannot be put
aside easily because the investigation of the white-collar crime is not
easy. Recently, Lt. Gen. Maqbool is appointed as the new chairman
of NAB. The new appointed chairman of the bureau has announced
to take some steps to speed up the accountability.

Revival of democracy
Pakistan's political history is a tale of opportunism,
confrontation, bickering and 'solemn efforts' to destabilise the
adversary at the cost of social and democratic institutions. Year after
year, government after government, all the political forces,
irrespective of their ideological affiliation, always tried to enjoy
unobstructed power.
It is the same people, who, ousted from power and stupefied,
find themselves 'pained' by the derailment of democracy, and
ardently demand a return to the democratic form of government. But
as the demand for the restoration of democracy and the return of the
army to the barracks appears to gain momentum, politicians need to
answer some vital questions. Will they again enforce the 'democracy'
witnessed in Pakistan after 1985?
The country and the people cannot afford another round of
prime ministerial slots for Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto. It is
time to analyse the situation and embrace the 'bony arms of reality'.
The challenge and dilemma Pakistan faces today is the
strengthening of civil society and the consolidation of democratic
institutions. How can that be brought about, who is going to do it,
and who has brought things to such a pretty pass are the pressing
questions? From these viewpoints, the recent political history of the
country is a huge disappointment. After the 11-year era of Ziaul Haq,
the expectations of the people were high. But, from 1985 onwards,
Pakistan has seen power change hands between the two mainstream
political parties on four occasions.
At that time, two new leaders were coming to the forefront,
 16
promising democratic days filled with prosperity. Unfortunately, the
PPP and the PML have only managed to establish themselves as
invalid and ineffective political forces, making it clear that they are
only interested in power and its perks, and nothing else. When not in
power, they tried to destabilise the government of the day by every
means.
Their ideological adherence and perseverance is open to
question. Both the PPP and the PML have been opportunistic enough
to form alliances with any party at any time. A harmonious
relationship between the PPP and the Altaf-led Muttahida Qaumi
Movement (MQM), then a similar bond between the PML and
MQM, and more recently, the possibility of an alliance between the
two mainstream parties, though ideologically discordant, is a telling
comment on their character.
During the last ten years, Pakistan witnessed social chaos,
economic bankruptcy, weakening of the political institutions and
system, disfiguring of the Constitution, lawlessness, social discord,
unemployment, mounting foreign debt and nothing to show for the
good of the people. Today, when Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto
are talking of joining hands for the revival of democracy, they should
be held accountable for their past misdeeds against each other.
Why did Nawaz Sharif, as the Punjab chief minister, instigate a no-
confidence vote against Benazir Bhutto during her first tenure as
prime minister? Why did Benazir rush back to Pakistan from abroad
to hand over the resignations of her partymen in the parliament as
Nawaz Sharif was battling it out for the seat of power with the then
president Ghulam Ishaq Khan? And why the smiling snaps of Nawaz
Sharif with then president Farooq Leghari as Benazir Bhutto was
lamenting the killing of her brother in Karachi? Nowadays, Farooq
Leghari is speaking out against both Sharif and Benazir.
Why, when one of them was in trouble, did the other not
care? Just because the other saw the opportunity to grab power. Why
none of them cared for democracy when one of them was losing
power before completing the democratic term? Still, under the
prevailing impasse, one should welcome the alliance being forged
between the PML and the PPP under the umbrella of the Grand
Democratic Alliance. On the surface, it betokens political harmony
and reconciliation that Pakistan so badly needs. But the question is
how the alliance is going to impact on the people of Pakistan? How
will it change their lives, how will it pull them out of the chaotic
mess they have been hurled into?
 17
Will it create more jobs, bring down the price spiral, make
their lives easy, and help in retiring the foreign debt? From past bitter
experience, it will do none of these things, except for protecting the
interests of a handful of politicians. The alliance, essentially between
the two former prime ministers, one in jail and the other in exile, is a
prime example of the politics of opportunism. Not so long ago, their
main preoccupation was hurling abuses at each other, and extending
'compliments' such as 'security risk, 'corrupt' and 'anti-state'. To give
exit strategies is quite easy while sitting thousand of miles away
from Pakistan, but to give a clear roadmap for improving the
economy is something politicians do - that too with the help of
rhetoric - when in power. The PPP chairperson takes pride in giving
employment, and initiating polio campaigns, but never tells the
nation as to how, under PPP rule, Pakistan would come out of the
donor agencies' vicious circle. And when is the PPP going to
undertake elections within the party itself?
Ironically, both Nawaz and Benazir are least prepared to
introduce democracy in their parties. Benazir is lifetime chairperson
of PPP while Nawaz, despite being in jail, continues to head the
PML, which has created an open rift within the party, and even
risking its very survival. This alone should be emblematic of their
attitude towards power - 'never to submit or yield'. They, and others
of their kind, when entrusted with power, maligned the good name of
democracy, misused their authority, set dubious examples of gross
corruption and left the country impoverished, while democracy
weakened. These are the precedents which require the masses to be
cautious about the ins and outs of the present demands for a return to
democracy. People must realise that these very politicians, when in
opposition, encouraged the military to intervene and on finding their
own dreams shattered after the event, started to give renewed calls
for the restoration of democracy. Even then, if one is generous
enough to overlook the past and grant the demand of these self-
professed champions of democracy, one is tempted to ask: "Do they
have any agenda, any consensus candidate, any programme to tackle
the economic crisis?" Are they going to use some magic wand to set
things right or is their criticism just for criticism's sake? One has
every reason, for instance, to suspect the intentions behind the
lobbying against the local government plan. Why doesn't anyone talk
of the inept governance at the local level? Maybe it is because the
existing system protects the vested interests. These people are in fact
happy with the inefficiency at the administrative level. It is perhaps
to their advantage that any proposed change that threatens their
 18
'sacred interests' is given a tinge of anti-state conspiracy.
The people of Pakistan must question the intentions of these
politicians and ask themselves as to what are their plans to improve
the economy and the condition of the common man. There is no
doubt that Pakistan today needs a stronger civil society, adequately
backed by supporting democratic institutions. But there are no
shortcuts and the journey is certainly long, requiring us to be patient,
aware and vigilant. As the present government continues to make
efforts for the implementation of the new system, it is indeed
encouraging that doors have been left open to suggestions and
proposals, and those found practically feasible are being accepted
with an open heart. Thus, the regime is proving itself more
democratic than the so-called democratic governments of the past.
Democracy, of course, is our ultimate goal and democracy has to be
installed. But to enjoy its true fruits, there is a need to educate the
masses and make them politically mature so that they can distinguish
right from wrong.
They must be made to understand that all that glitters is not
gold. They must know that those proclaiming to be gold have rusted
in the past.

Cause of Conflict
In 1846, the British colonial rulers of India sold the territory,
including its populace (by a sale deed called the Treaty of Amritsar
in return for a sum of money) to a Hindu warlord who had no roots
there. This warlord who bought himself into royalty, styled himself
as the Maharajah of Jammu and Kashmir. The acts of brutality
during his regime have left bitter memories, some of which persist to
this present day. Several mosques were closed and occupied by his
forces.
The slaughtering of a cow was declared a crime punishable
by death. Between 1925 and 1947 Maharajah Hari Singh continued
this policy of discrimination against the 94 percent Muslim majority.
It was nearly 65 years ago, in 1931, that the people of Kashmir made
their first organised protest against Maharajah Hari Singh's cruelty.
That led to the "Quit Kashmir" campaign against the Maharajah in
1946, and eventually to the Azad Kashmir movement which gained
momentum a year later.
The first armed encounter between the Maharajah's troops
and insurgent forces occurred in August 1947. At this time, Britain
 19
was liquidating its empire in the subcontinent. Faced with a
insurgency of his people, strengthened by a few hundred civilian
volunteers from Pakistan, Maharajah fled to Jammu on 25th October
1947. In Jammu, after he ascertained a commitment of military
assistance from the government of India to crush the impending
revolution in Kashmir, he is alleged to have signed an "Instrument of
Accession" to India.
Lord Mountbatten conditionally accepted the "Instrument of
Accession" on behalf of the British Crown, and furthermore, outlined
the conditions for official acceptance in a letter dated 27th October
1947:
"In consistence with their policy that in the case of any
(native) state where the issue of accession has been subject of
dispute, the question of accession should be decided in accordance
with the wishes of the people of the state, it is my government's wish
that as soon as law and order have been restored in Kashmir and her
soil cleared of the invaders the question of state's accession should
be settled by a reference to the people."
Then Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, in a speech
aired on All-India Radio (2nd November 1947), reaffirmed the
Indian Government's commitment to the right of the Kashmiri people
to determine their own future through a plebiscite.
"We have declared that the fate of Kashmir is ultimately to
be decided by the people. That pledge we have given, and the
Maharajah has supported it, not only to the people of Jammu and
Kashmir, but also to the world. We will not and cannot back out of it.
We are prepared when peace and law have been established to have a
referendum held under international auspices like the United
Nations. We want it to be a fair and just reference to the people and
we shall accept their verdict."
The Government of India accepted the "Instrument of
accession" conditionally, promising the people of the state and the
world at large that "accession" would be final only after the wishes
of the people of the state were ascertained upon return of normalcy
in the state.
Following this, India moved her forces into Srinagar and a
drawn-out fight ensued between Indian forces and the forces of
liberation. The forces of Azad Kashmir successfully resisted India's
armed intervention and liberated one-third of the State. Realising it
could not quell the resistance, India brought the issue to the United
Nations Security Council in January 1948. As the rebel forces had
 20
undoubtedly been joined by volunteers from Pakistan, India charged
Pakistan with having sent "armed raiders" into the state, and
demanded that Pakistan be declared an aggressor in Kashmir.
Furthermore, India demanded that Pakistan stop aiding freedom
fighters, and allowing the transit of tribesmen into the state.
After acceptance of these demands, coupled with the
assurance that all "raiders" were withdrawn, India would enable a
plebiscite to be held under impartial auspices to decide Kashmir's
future status. In reply, Pakistan charged India with having
manoeuvred the Maharajah's accession through "fraud and violence"
and with collusion with a "discredited" ruler in the repression of his
people. Pakistan's counter complaint was also coupled with the
proposal of a plebiscite under the supervision and control of the
United Nations to settle the dispute.
The Security Council exhaustively discussed the question
from January until April of 1948. It came to the conclusion that it
would be impossible to determine responsibility for the fighting and
futile to blame either side. Since both parties desired that the
question of accession should be decided through an impartial
plebiscite, the Council developed proposals based on the common
ground between them.
These were embodied in the resolution of 21st April 1948,
envisaging a cease-fire, the withdrawal of all outside forces from the
State, and a plebiscite under the control of an administrator who
would be nominated by the Secretary General. For negotiating the
details of the plan, the Council constituted a five-member
commission known as "United Nations Commission for India and
Pakistan" (UNCIP) to implement the resolution.
After the cease-fire, India began efforts to drag the issue
down, and under various pretexts tried to stop the UN resolution
from being implemented. To this day, India pursues the same plan,
and the resolution of 1948 has yet to be realised.
India and Pakistan were at war over Kashmir from 194748
and all early U. N. Security Council Resolutions contained
admonishment for both countries demanding an immediate cease-
fire, which would be followed by a-UN directed Plebiscite.
However, disregarding that some fifteen resolutions were passed by
the United Nations to this very effect, India and Pakistan again
initiated military skirmish in 1965. At this point, another cease-fire
agreement was effected after United Nations intervention, followed
by an agreement at Tashkent with the good offices of the USSR.
 21
In 1971, India and Pakistan once again became locked in
war. Efforts to bring the latest conflict to an end resulted in the Simla
Agreement and was signed by both India and Pakistan and declared
commitment to reach a "final settlement" on the Kashmir issue, but
this has yet to happen.

Why Kashmir East Timor Are Similar

While addressing the UN Millennium Summit the other day,
the Chief Executive compared the case of Kashmiris, who have been
deprived of their right of self-determination, with that of the East
Timorese who won it last year under the UN auspices.
Commenting on this parallel, the US State Department
spokesman advised against drawing “facile analogies” as in his view
“Kashmir is not East Timor.” Leaders of other western countries
showed similar sentiments.
Following this unsympathetic attitude of the West, many
serious Pakistani commentators attributed the negative attitude to the
fact that the East Timporese are Christian whereas Kashmiris are
Muslims. The purpose here is to investigate whether we are justified
in drawing an analogy between the two situations. And in case of an
affirmative answer, to find out the reason, which makes the western
world reject the analogy.
East Timor was a classical case of European colonialism as
it was occupied by Portugal some 450 years ago and following its
departure in 1974 it was occupied by Indonesia with the tacit
approval of the West. Following the end of second World War and
the establishment of the United Nations, a decolonisation movement
started which resulted in the adoption in 1960 by the General
Assembly of the landmark Resolution 1514 entitled “Declaration on
the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.”
This resolution resulted in establishing the right of self-
determination of a normative character in favour of the colonised
peoples.
However, it is noteworthy that this right, based on “salt-
water” theory, was applicable to colonial cases only and did not
extend to “peoples already organised in the form of a state, which are
not under colonial domination.”
Now when the East Timorese exercised the right of self-
determination, as embodied in the 1960 decolonisation resolution, it
looked a perfectly legitimate and normal affair. In fact, the
 22
international community looked apologetic for having denied this
right to the East Timorese whereas other territories in similar
situations had enjoyed this right for a long time. A opposed to this,
Kashmir, since the decolonisation of the subcontinent in 1947, was
never a colonised territory in the classical sense to which the right of
self-determination needed to be applied.
The detractors of Pakistan’s viewpoint, however, forget (or
should we say conveniently forget?) that the concept of the right of
self-determination did not get frozen as defined in 1960 and in fact
since then has undergone a major transformation. The next important
milestone in this respect was the adoption in 1966 of the two
International Human Rights Covenants whose common article 1(1)
broke new ground when it stated in unambiguous terms, “all peoples
have the right of self-determination.”
In other words, the concept outgrew the colonial context in
which it had been placed previously and henceforth became
applicable to all situations, colonial or otherwise. Perhaps that
explains why India, while accepting the two covenants, entered a
reservation to Article 1 contending that the right in question applied
to colonial situations only and not to people living in a sovereign
independent state.
The trend towards detachment of the right of self-
determination from its colonial moorings found a new expression in
Article 20 (2) of the African Charter of human and People’s Right
wherein it was conceived as “the right to free colonised or oppressed
peoples from the bonds of domination.” This development was
remarkable because by accepting the right of oppressed peoples to
self-determination, the African people in one go jettisoned their
traditional acceptance of the inviolability of the established colonial
borders.
Subsequently further new heights were scaled when this
concept was enshrined in Article VIII of the Final act of the Helsinki
Conference in which it was stated, “ all peoples have the right to
determine their internal and external political status.”
Since the foregoing international instruments are applicable
only to the states which were parties to them, the concept of self-
determination needed to be adopted in a universal document in order
to be made applicable to all states. Happened in 1970 when the
General Assembly adopted Resolution 2625 entitled “Declaration on
Friendly Relations.”
 23
The Declaration, while understandably paying lip-service to
the idea of preservation of the territorial integrity of states, at the
same time proclaimed that all peoples have the right freely to
determine, among other things, their political status. The
International Commission of Jurists has described the Declaration as
“the most authoritative statement of the principles of international
law relevant to the questions of self-determination and territorial
integrity. “Those who reject the analogy between East Timor and
Kashmir obviously have the decolonisation context of the former in
mind, which obviously does not hold in the case of the latter.
However, what they forgot is that at least since the adoption of the
1970 Declaration the right of self-determination is applicable to
people fighting for their freedom within the confines of an
independent sovereign state.
Consequently, the right of self-determination is as much
applicable to Kashmir as in the case of East Timor. In fact, it is
applicable to Kashmir even more than to East Timor because of the
existence of the UN resolutions, particularly those of August 13,
1948, and January 5, 1949, which specifically recognise this right in
favour of Kashmiris and which were accepted as an “international
agreement” by the Indian government.
In the light of the foregoing, one can say that on the essential
question of the application of the right of self-determination, there is
no difference between the two cases. In fact, this right is applicable
to the case of Kashmir with greater force than the East Timor on the
basis of not only the aforementioned 1970 Declaration but also the
relevant UN resolutions, in addition to the on-going freedom struggle
by the Kashmiris.
Regarding the charge of a western religious bias against
Kashmiris, in our judgement it is unjustified because despite the
existence in western societies of a deep-seated prejudice against
Islam, these states are motivated more by political, economic and
security considerations than by religious considerations. Examples
are galore. The shrieking one in recent years has been that of Muslim
Afghanistan, which, when occupied by the Soviet Union in the
1980s, was backed by the Christian West for reasons other than
religion.
If religion does not explain the western rejection of the
analogy between East Timor and Kashmir, then what does? The
explanation lies in the fact that the West does not want to offend
India because of the enormous potential economic dividends that it
 24
offers and for the reason that it wants to build up India as a
counterweight to China. The western attitude in the matter only
shows how selective it is in the application of the right of self-
determination. The fact however remains that despite the western
rejection of the analogy between the two situations for reasons of
expediency, Kashmir is East Timor.

United Nations (UN)

International organization of nation-states, based on the
sovereign equality of its members. Under its charter, the UN was
established “to maintain international peace and security”; “to
develop friendly relations among nations”; and “to achieve
international cooperation in solving ... economic, social, cultural, or
humanitarian [problems]” and in “encouraging respect for human
rights and for fundamental freedoms”. Members are pledged to fulfil
the obligations they have assumed, to settle international disputes by
peaceful means, to refrain from the threat or use of force, to assist the
UN in actions ordered under the charter and to refrain from assisting
any country against which such UN action is being taken, and to act
according to the charter's principles.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE UN: The United Nations is
usually considered the successor to the League of Nations, the
international organization formed after World War I to serve many
of the same purposes. The league, however, failed to maintain peace
and grew progressively weaker in the years just before World War II.
Origins: The first commitment to establish a new
international organization was made in the Atlantic Charter, signed
by President Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States and Prime
Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain on August 14, 1941, at a
conference held on a warship off the coast of Newfoundland. They
pledged to establish a “wider and permanent system of general
security” and expressed their desire “to bring about the fullest
collaboration between all nations in the economic field”. The
principles of the Atlantic Charter were more widely accepted in the
Declaration by United Nations, signed on January 1, 1942, by
representatives of 26 allied nations that were fighting against the
Axis powers during World War II. In this document the term United
Nations, suggested by Roosevelt, was first used formally.
Direct action to form the new organization was taken at a
1943 conference in Moscow. On October 30, representatives of the
 25
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Great Britain, China,
and the United States signed a declaration in which they recognized
the need to establish “at the earliest practicable date a general
international organization”. Meeting in Tehrân a month later,
Roosevelt, Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin reaffirmed
“the supreme responsibility resting upon us and all the United
Nations to make a peace which will ... banish the scourge and terror
of war”.
Following up on the Moscow declaration, representatives of
the four powers met at the Dumbarton Oaks estate in Washington,
D.C., in the autumn of 1944, to work out a series of proposals for an
international organization. They agreed on a draft charter that
specified its purposes, structure, and methods of operation, but they
could not agree on a method of voting in the proposed Security
Council, which was to have the major responsibility for peace and
security.
The voting issue was settled at the Yalta conference in
February 1945, when Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met for the
last of their wartime negotiating summits. Essentially, the Soviet
leader accepted the Anglo-American position that limited great-
power prerogatives on procedural matters, but retained the right of
veto on substantive issues. At the same time, the allied leaders called
for a conference of United Nations to prepare the charter of the new
organization.
Delegates from 50 nations met in San Francisco on April 25,
1945, for what was officially known as the United Nations
Conference on International Organization. During a two-month
period, they completed a charter consisting of 111 articles, based on
the draft developed at Dumbarton Oaks. The charter was approved
on June 25 and signed the next day; it became effective on October
24, 1945, after ratification by a majority of the signatories. The
bonds of the wartime alliance against common enemies undoubtedly
hastened agreement on establishing the new organization.
Headquarters: On December 10, 1945, the United States
Congress invited the UN to establish its headquarters in the United
States. The organization accepted and in August 1946 moved to a
temporary location in Lake Success, New York. Later that year a site
was purchased bordering the East River in Manhattan, and plans for
a permanent headquarters were drawn up. The site was granted a
measure of extraterritoriality under an agreement between the United
States and the UN. The complex, completed in mid-1952, includes
 26
the General Assembly Hall, the Secretariat Building, the Conference
Building, and the Dag Hammarskjöld Library.
Membership: Under the charter, UN membership is open to
all “peace-loving” states that accept the obligations of the
organization. The 50 nations that attended the San Francisco
conference, with the addition of Poland, became founding members
of the UN. Until 1971 China was represented by a delegation from
the Nationalist government of Taiwan; in October of that year,
however, the General Assembly voted to seat the delegation from the
People's Republic of China in its stead.
New members are admitted by a two-thirds vote of the
General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council.
Since 1945, membership has increased more than threefold, mainly
with the admission of many new African and Asian countries that
had been European colonies. As of May 1994, the UN had 184
members.
Organization: The charter established six principal UN
organs: the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic
and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council, the International Court
of Justice, and the Secretariat.
All member states are represented in the General Assembly,
which is the main deliberative body of the UN. The General
Assembly meets annually in regular sessions and in special sessions
at the request of a majority of its members or of the Security
Council. The assembly has no enforcement authority; its resolutions
are recommendations to member states that carry the political and
moral force of majority approval but lack power of direct
implementation. The charter, however, permits the assembly to
establish agencies and programmes to carry out its
recommendations; among the most important of these are the
following: the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP),
the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
(UNCTAD), and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
The Security Council, which is in continuous session, is the
UN's central organ for maintaining peace. The council has 15
members, of which 5—China, France, Great Britain, Russia, and the
United States—have been accorded permanent seats. Periodically
proposals have been made for new permanent members to be added
(e.g. Germany, Japan), and old ones removed (e.g. France, Britain) to
reflect the changing balance of world power, but to date no
substantive revision has been made. Nonpermanent members serve
 27
for two years, with five new members elected by the General
Assembly every year. Decisions of the council require nine votes,
including the concurring votes of the permanent members on
substantive issues. This rule of “great-power unanimity” does not
apply to procedural matters.
The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), which meets
annually, has 54 members; 18 members are elected each year by the
General Assembly for 3-year terms. ECOSOC coordinates the
economic and social activities of the UN and its specialized agencies
such as the World Health Organization (WHO); the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); the
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); and the International
Labour Organization (ILO). In practice, ECOSOC's functions are
limited because each specialized agency is organized separately and
is governed by its own constitution and elected bodies; the agencies
submit annual reports to ECOSOC. The UN and the specialized
agencies together are called the United Nations System.
The Trusteeship Council originally was responsible for
supervising 11 territories placed under international trust at the end
of World War II. By the early 1990s all of the original trust
territories had been dissolved, and all of the dependencies had
achieved either full sovereignty or self-government as part of a larger
state. The remaining trusteeship, the Palau Islands, became an
independent republic in 1994, and the Trusteeship Council ceased to
exist. Other colonial questions have been transferred to the General
Assembly and special subsidiary bodies.
The International Court of Justice, situated in The Hague, the
Netherlands, is the judicial body of the UN. The court hears cases
referred to it by UN members, who retain the right to decide whether
they will accept the court's ruling as binding. When asked to do so by
the UN, its principal organs, or the specialized agencies, the
International Court of Justice may also render advisory opinions.
Fifteen judges sit as members of the court; they are elected for 9-year
terms by the General Assembly and the Security Council.
The Secretariat serves the other UN organs and carries out
the programmes and policies of the organization. The body is headed
by the secretary-general, who is appointed by the General Assembly
on the recommendation of the Security Council. Since the founding
of the UN seven secretaries-general have held office: Trygve Lie
(Norway), 1946-1953; Dag Hammarskjöld (Sweden), 1953-1961; U
Thant (Burma), 1961-1971; Kurt Waldheim (Austria), 1972-1981;
 28
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (Peru), 1982-1991; Boutros Boutros-Ghali
(Egypt), 1992-1996; and Kofi Annan (Ghana), beginning in 1997.
Financing: The UN's operating costs are met by
contributions from member states in accordance with a schedule of
assessments approved by the General Assembly. Only the regular
budget, constituting ongoing activities under the charter, is covered
by fixed assessments; special programmes such as UNICEF and the
UNDP are usually financed through voluntary contributions. For the
1990 and 1991 period, the regular budget appropriations totalled
more than US$2.1 billion. Under the 1990 and 1991 schedule, most
members paid less than 1 per cent of the budget; only 15 countries
contributed more than 1 per cent. The largest contributors were the
United States (25 per cent) and the former USSR (10 per cent). Of
the other members, only Japan, Germany, France, Great Britain,
Italy, and Canada contributed more than 2 per cent. In the mid-1980s
the UN underwent a serious financial crisis. Many member states,
including the United States and the USSR, withheld part of their
contributions due to national fiscal problems and dissatisfaction with
certain aspects of the UN system.
THE UN AND PEACE AND SECURITY: Under the
charter, the Security Council is primarily responsible for matters of
peace and security, with the General Assembly retaining only
residual authority. Articles 33-38 of the charter authorize the
Security Council to encourage disputing nations to settle their
differences through peaceful means, including negotiations, inquiry,
mediation, conciliation, arbitration, and judicial settlement. In
carrying out this responsibility, the council may delegate
representatives or set up special committees to investigate disputes
and recommend means of settlement.
When the council determines that a dispute threatens peace,
it may, under Articles 39-51, enforce its recommendations, either by
non-military means, such as economic or diplomatic sanctions, or by
the use of military forces. This is the only place where the charter
authorizes enforcement action. Such action is subject to the
concurring votes of the five permanent council members, however,
and thus emphasizes the significance of the great-power veto on
important issues. Military action is also subject to the availability of
armed forces, a condition that has been difficult to fulfill.
Finally, under Article 26, the Security Council is responsible
for formulating plans “for the establishment of a system for the
regulation of armaments”. The UN Charter places less emphasis on
 29
international arms control and disarmament as means of achieving
peace than did the League of Nations Covenant. Because of events
between the two world wars, many world leaders concluded that
peace could be achieved only through the cooperation of the major
powers acting, as Roosevelt put it, as the world's “policemen”. This
idea is incorporated in the requirement for great-power unanimity; it
also explains why the charter has been called a system of “limited”
collective security, as enforcement action cannot be taken against the
will of any country that holds a permanent seat on the council.
Shortly after World War II and the establishment of the UN,
political cooperation among the major powers—and especially
between the United States and the USSR—broke down, and the
world entered into the period of the Cold War. As the interests of the
United States and the USSR clashed, the ability of the UN to
maintain peace was limited.
Under Article 43 of the charter, the Security Council was to
negotiate agreements with member states to provide military units
that could enforce its decisions. Negotiations, which began in 1946,
soon became deadlocked on questions of the size, composition, and
stationing of military forces. The United States proposed that each
permanent council member provide specialized troops, with the
Americans, for example, offering air force units, the British
providing naval units, and the Soviets sending land troops. The
USSR, however, argued for “equality”, with each country providing
equal numbers of troops across the board. These differences were
never settled.
A similar stalemate soon developed in the UN Atomic
Energy Commission, created by the first resolution passed by the
General Assembly on January 24, 1946. The commission's mandate
was to develop a system to control atomic energy and limit it to
peaceful uses. The United States presented a comprehensive plan for
international control of atomic energy, including an agreement to
dispose of its own nuclear weapons and facilities once an
international system for inspection became operative. The USSR
insisted that the United States destroy all existing nuclear weapons
immediately and objected to any international inspection as an
infringement on national sovereignty. Again, the differences between
the two nations proved irreconcilable.
The original intentions of the charter have, in fact, never
been implemented. The Security Council was not completely stalled,
however; it was able to bring about the settlement of disputes,
 30
largely through mediation and good offices, in situations in which
the interests of the permanent members, especially the United States
and the USSR, converged. One such case involved the withdrawal of
the Dutch from Indonesia in 1949; another in that same year
concerned ending the Six-Day War in 1967. In 1950, however,
strong differences arose among the great powers when forces from
North Korea attacked South Korea, precipitating the Korean War.
Korea, which had been under Japanese control since 1905,
was divided after World War II at the 38th parallel in the Korean
Peninsula. Separate governments were formed—the one in the north
sponsored by the USSR and the other by the United States. UN
efforts to unify Korea through nationwide free elections failed. When
North Korean forces attacked the South on June 25, 1950, the
Security Council declared the attack a breach of the peace and called
for withdrawal of North Korean troops north of the 38th parallel. In
two other resolutions, the council established a UN command under
US auspices and asked member nations to provide military units to
assist in repelling the armed attack on the Republic of Korea.
Two elements of the Korean case were unusual. The first
was the USSR's absence from the Security Council. Six months
earlier, the Soviet representative had left the council in protest
against the continued presence of the Nationalist Chinese delegate in
the seat designated for China, despite the defeat of the Nationalists
and the establishment of a Communist government on the mainland.
The USSR thus was not present to veto the council's actions against
the Soviet-sponsored North Korean regime. When the Soviet
delegate returned to the council in July, he declared the Korean
action illegal because it was undertaken without the agreement of all
the permanent council members. The United States responded that
the issue had been decided with the agreement of those permanent
members who were present and voting. In this argument, the USSR
took a “strict” interpretation, and the United States a “broad”
interpretation, of the charter's provisions, each motivated by political
interests.
A second unusual element in the Korean case was the
establishment of a UN command that was, in effect, a United States
military command, composed of troops from 16 member nations and
the Republic of Korea. Because no previous agreements had been
reached to provide military forces to the UN, the Security Council
took ad hoc action by asking the United States to use its already
 31
established military structure as the base for UN action. Otherwise,
the UN would have been unable to act quickly and expeditiously.
The conflict continued for more than three years; on July 27,
1953, an armistice was signed. More than 40 years later, the country
is still divided despite acceptance by both sides of the principle of
reunification. The Korean question has remained on the General
Assembly agenda. Resolutions have been passed urging the two
sides to replace the long armistice with a stable peace. In 1991 North
Korea and South Korea were admitted to the UN.
One major consequence of the Korean conflict was the
“Uniting for Peace” resolution. After the USSR returned to the
Security Council, the United States presented to the General
Assembly a resolution authorizing the assembly to consider cases
that threaten peace when a veto has prevented council action. This
“Uniting for Peace” resolution, adopted on November 3, 1950, made
explicit an expansion of General Assembly authority in matters of
peace and security.
UN Peacekeeping Forces: Since the early 1950s the UN
role in maintaining peace and security around the world has
expanded. UN-sponsored forces have been especially active in areas
where decolonization has led to instability. In many cases, the
withdrawal of the former colonial power left a political vacuum, and
a struggle for domination ensued. In response, the UN developed a
strategy of what Secretary-General Hammarskjöld called “preventive
diplomacy”—the deployment of peacekeeping forces with two main
purposes: to separate antagonists, providing time and opportunity for
negotiation, and to keep local conflicts from spreading over an entire
region. In 1988 the peacekeeping forces were awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize.
UN peacekeeping operations have been carried out in the
Middle East since 1956 and in Cyprus since 1964. In Africa a force
was maintained in the Congo (now Zaïre) from 1960 to 1964; since
then, peacekeeping missions have been sent to Angola, Western
Sahara, South Africa, and Mozambique. In 1992 the UN began a
major operation in Somalia, involving about 30,000 troops by early
1993, to provide protection for humanitarian operations—
particularly food deliveries to areas of famine. Two other major areas
of UN involvement in the early 1990s were Cambodia, where the
UN monitored elections, and the former Yugoslavia, where civil war
among Serbs, Croats, and Muslims in the republics of Croatia and
Bosnia has left tens of thousands of people dead and millions
 32
homeless. Under the rules originally formulated by Hammarskjöld,
the great powers were excluded from UN peacekeeping forces,
preventing them from advancing their own interests under cover of
the UN flag. With the end of the cold war, British and French troops
had prominent roles in the former Yugoslavia, and a large US force
was initially sent to pacify Somalia. In 1992 a contingent of Japanese
troops joined the Cambodian operation.
The first UN peacekeeping force was organized in the
Middle East in response to the Suez crisis of 1956. The Middle East
had been an area of bitter rivalries since 1948, when hostilities broke
out between the Arab countries in the region and the new nation of
Israel, created in accordance with a UN plan that partitioned
Palestine into two separate states, one Jewish and one Arab. In 1949
a UN mediator, acting under the authority of the Security Council,
negotiated a series of armistice agreements between Israel, on the
one hand, and Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, on the other. A
United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) was
formed to help the parties supervise the terms of the agreements; for
a time the region remained in a state of uneasy truce.
Fighting broke out again on October 29, 1956, when Israel
moved troops into the Sinai Peninsula, forcing Egyptian soldiers
back to the Suez Canal. Earlier that year, Egyptian President Gamal
Abdel Nasser had nationalized the canal, evoking concern in Great
Britain and France that the canal might be closed to their shipping.
The Middle East situation was complicated greatly when the British
and the French attacked Egypt on October 31, landing forces in the
Suez Canal area. Britain and France also vetoed a Security Council
resolution that called on Israel to withdraw its forces behind the 1949
armistice line.
Under the authority of the “Uniting for Peace” resolution,
the General Assembly, in a series of resolutions, urged an end to
hostilities and set up a United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) to
supervise compliance by all parties. By late December, British and
French forces had withdrawn from Egypt, and by March 1957
arrangements had been made for the withdrawal of Israeli troops.
The first UNEF unit arrived in Egypt on November 15, 1956, and by
February 1957 some 6,000 troops from ten member states were
positioned in three zones: along the frontier between Egypt and
Israel; in the Gaza Strip; and near the Strait of Tiran to monitor
passage into the Gulf of Aqaba, which was vital for Israeli shipping.
 33
In May 1967 UNEF was withdrawn at the request of Egypt,
and on June 5 Israel launched what became known as the Six-Day
War, a coordinated attack on all fronts to secure stronger defensive
positions along its borders. By June 10 Israel occupied the Sinai and
the Gaza Strip, the territory on the West Bank of the River Jordan,
and part of the Golan Heights on the Syrian border. The Security
Council on November 22 unanimously approved Resolution 242,
setting down a series of principles for securing peace in the region.
In essence, the resolution proposed that Israel withdraw from the
occupied territories in return for recognition of its independence by
the Arab states and the establishment of secure borders.
Hostilities broke out once again in October 1973, when
Egypt attacked Israeli positions in the Sinai, and Syria struck against
those along the Golan Heights. The Security Council, after calling
for a ceasefire, again urged the parties to seek a broader settlement of
their dispute by implementing Resolution 242. In the Sinai, a new
peacekeeping force, UNEF II, was set up to patrol a buffer zone
between Israeli and Egyptian troops. By March 1974 both sides had
disengaged. In the north, along the Golan Heights, sporadic fighting
continued until June, when a United Nations Disengagement
Observer Force (UNDOF) was put into place. However, the sources
of the Arab-Israeli conflict remained unchanged.
Since 1974 the Middle East has been an annual item on the
UN agenda. Yet another peacekeeping force was set up in March
1978 to help stabilize the situation in southern Lebanon after Israeli
forces crossed the border to retaliate against a Palestinian raid. A
United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was established
with 6,000 troops from ten countries.
Efforts outside the UN to seek a broader settlement achieved
some success when, in March 1979, Egypt and Israel, through US
mediation, signed a formal peace treaty providing for a phased Israeli
withdrawal from the Sinai, the restoration of diplomatic relations
between the two countries, and a general framework for extending
the peace process to other Arab states. Withdrawal of Israel from the
Sinai led to the discontinuation of UNEF II; its mandate was
permitted to lapse on July 24, 1979.
UNTSO observers continued to function between Egypt and
Israel under the terms of the 1949 agreement, and both UNDOF and
UNIFIL were still operating in the 1990s. Southern Lebanon
remained turbulent. The region was a stronghold of Palestinian
commando bases until the Israeli invasion of June 1982;
 34
subsequently, Israeli and Syrian forces remained in Lebanon, along
with Palestinian guerrillas.
Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and of the territories on
the West Bank of the River Jordan came under increasingly severe
attack in both the Security Council and the General Assembly.
Resolutions recognized the rights of the Palestinian Arabs, and their
representatives were given opportunities to bring their case to the
world forum. Expansion of Israeli settlements in the territories
further complicated the problem. In 1993 leaders of Israel and the
Palestine Liberation Organization signed a peace agreement calling
for the Palestinians to gradually assume responsibility for civil
administration of the occupied lands, beginning with the Gaza Strip
and Jericho area. The first stages of the agreement were implemented
in 1994.
Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, which began
the Gulf War brought an immediate response from the Security
Council. A series of resolutions passed between August and
November condemned the occupation and annexation of Kuwait;
imposed an extensive embargo on commercial and financial dealings
with Iraq and Iraqi-occupied Kuwait; sanctioned the use of military
force to ensure compliance with the embargo; and, finally,
authorized member states to use “all necessary means” to expel Iraq
from Kuwait if Iraq had not already withdrawn by January 15, 1991.
In response, Iraq called for an international peace conference to
consider a broad range of regional conflicts, including the Israeli-
Palestinian dispute; the United States and its allies insistently
opposed such linkage. After the US-led coalition in the Gulf War
quickly defeated Iraq and restored Kuwaiti independence, a UN
peacekeeping force moved in to monitor a demilitarized zone along
the Iraq-Kuwait border. Further UN presence was called on in
northern Iraq to protect Kurds who had rebelled against the regime of
Saddam Hussein.
The first major operation in Africa began in 1960 in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (now Zaïre) shortly after it
became independent of Belgium. A mutiny among Congolese troops
led to a breakdown in public order. Belgium quickly dispatched
military forces to the area; at the same time, the province of Katanga
(now Shaba), led by its premier Moise Tshombe, declared its
independence. Congolese President Joseph Kasavubu and Prime
Minister Patrice Lumumba asked the UN for assistance. With
authorization from the Security Council the secretary-general
 35
organized an economic programme and an international
peacekeeping force that, at its peak, totalled more than 20,000
troops. On February 21, 1961, the Security Council authorized the
UN troops to use force.
The UN's task was complex: to help maintain order without
even the appearance of taking sides, and to exercise military
authority carefully for defensive purposes without launching
offensive programmes. The UN undoubtedly helped the Congo to
emerge as a united country. A heavy loss was incurred in 1961,
however, when Secretary-General Hammarskjöld was killed in an
aeroplane crash while trying to bring about a ceasefire between the
central government and Katanga.
The UN peacekeepers in Western Sahara, South Africa,
Angola, and Mozambique were mostly observers. The mission to
Somalia, begun late in 1992, was much more complex. After the
defeat of Somalia's longtime leader, Muhammed Siad Barre, by
rebels in 1991, the nation descended into anarchy. International
famine-relief agencies found it increasingly difficult to operate, and
massive starvation was imminent. In April 1992 the Security Council
voted to establish an operation in Somalia. But when 500 troops
arrived in September, they were unable to operate. On December 3
the council voted to accept an offer from the United States to provide
a large force to safeguard relief operations. Within a month about
15,000 US troops were in Somalia, and food supplies had begun to
reach most of the people. The UN took command of the operation
from the United States in May 1993, but in June, in an ambush, 23
Pakistani soldiers were killed by Somali rebels thought to be
controlled by Mohammad Farrah Aidid, a clan leader. The United
States sent in reinforcements with the goal of capturing Aidid and
pacifying his forces. After several failed missions, the United States
and the UN re-emphasized attempts to reach a political solution.
The United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus
(UNFICYP) has been stationed there since March 1964 to serve as a
deterrent to open fighting between the Greek and Turkish
communities. Cyprus gained independence from Great Britain in
1960 under a constitution that sought to balance the rights and
interests of the two ethnic groups in the population, the Greeks being
heavily in the majority. After three years of relative peace, violence
broke out between the two communities late in 1963. On March 4,
1964, the Security Council recommended UN mediation and
authorized the formation of a peacekeeping force. The force reached
 36
almost 7,000 later that year, but has been progressively reduced,
numbering some 2,100 troops in the late 1980s.
The most difficult period occurred in 1974, when Turkey
intervened in support of the Turkish Cypriots after a change of
government threatened to shift the constitutional balance in favour of
those Greek Cypriots who desired union with Greece. A ceasefire
was achieved by mid-August and was followed the next year by a
transfer of more than 8,000 Turkish Cypriots to the Turkish-
controlled north of the island with the assistance of UNFICYP. Since
then UNFICYP has patrolled a strip separating the northern sector
from the Greek sector in the south.
Meanwhile, the secretary-general has continually been
involved in discussions to negotiate a settlement between the Greek
and Turkish Cypriots. In recent years, these discussions have focused
on guidelines necessary to bring about a bizonal state and guarantee
the security of the Turkish Cypriot community. In late 1983, with the
talks still stalemated, the northern region (occupied by Turkish
forces) declared its independence. The UN refused to recognize the
new Turkish Cypriot state, and UNFICYP personnel continued to
serve as a barrier between the two sides.
Providing peacekeeping forces in areas of conflict has been
only one of the UN contributions to the process of decolonization.
The UN trusteeship system, following the lines of the League of
Nations mandates, was limited to the former colonies of ex-enemy
states and to former league mandates that had not reached self-
government. An early proposal to place all colonial territories under
UN trusteeship was opposed by the colonial powers. A far-reaching
commitment towards self-government nonetheless emerged in
Article 73 of the charter, which constituted a Declaration Regarding
Non-Self-Governing Territories and was universal in scope, applying
to all colonial territories.
Article 73 was only a statement of long-range intent, but it
permitted the broadly based General Assembly, rather than the more
limited Trusteeship Council, to become the central arena for colonial
questions. The declaration called on colonial regimes to submit
reports on economic and social conditions in their territories. As
early as 1946, a committee was set up by the assembly to review
those reports; it grew into a permanent Committee on Information
from Non-Self-Governing Territories, which increasingly acted as an
instrument of international accountability and pressured the colonial
powers to hasten the granting of independence.
 37
With the addition of newly independent states as members of
the UN by 1960, a broad majority in the assembly voted to expand
the objectives of Article 73 through a new Declaration on the
Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. The
1960 declaration asserts that colonialism “constitutes a denial of
fundamental human rights” and that “inadequacy of political,
economic, social or educational preparedness should never serve as a
pretext for delaying independence”.
With or without the UN, the old colonial empires were
doomed to break up; the process had already begun by the end of
World War II. The UN, however, provided an organized structure in
which opposition to colonialism could be energized and in which
new nations, emerging from colonialism, could be mobilized for a
common cause. The UN also provided a forum to deal with colonial
questions. The trusteeship system, and even the original Article 73,
was based on the idea that self-government was a limited and long-
range objective. Through the General Assembly, now dominated by
a majority of formerly colonized states, independence has been
identified as an immediate right of all peoples and international
support of the struggle for self-determination has been organized.
The problems of decolonization in southern Africa have had
a particularly long history of controversy in the UN. They have
included several issues involving the former Portuguese-
administered territories, the efforts of the white majority to retain
control in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), conflict with South
Africa over the former mandate of South West Africa (now
Namibia), and the policy of apartheid (racial segregation) enforced
by the South African government from 1948 to 1991.
From the time it joined the UN in 1955, Portugal refused to
comply with Article 73 and submit information about its territories,
arguing that its “overseas provinces” were part of Portugal itself and
thus could not be subject to international regulation. A special
committee, set up in 1960, concluded that Portugal's relationship
with its territories was colonial in nature; it affirmed the rights of the
people in the territories to self-determination. Throughout the 1960s
both the Security Council and the General Assembly condemned
Portugal for repressive acts against the liberation groups that had
emerged in all the territories. Portuguese policies changed only after
a revolutionary upheaval in Portugal itself. In August 1974 the new
Portuguese government began a process that, by the end of 1975, led
to the independence of its territories: Guinea-Bissau on September
 38
10, 1974; and, in 1975, Mozambique on June 25, Cape Verde on July
5, São Tomé and Príncipe on July 12, and Angola on November 11.
In 1965 the white minority government of Southern
Rhodesia, already under limited self-rule, issued a “unilateral
declaration of independence” from Great Britain. The British had
earlier resisted pressures to grant independence to the territory until a
broadly based government could be established. The white minority
government was immediately condemned by the General Assembly.
In a series of subsequent resolutions, the Security Council voted
mandatory economic sanctions aimed at cutting off Southern
Rhodesia's trade and communications. The assembly also supported
liberation groups organized to resist the minority regime and
recommended that they be given material assistance by UN agencies.
The minority regime, largely supported by South Africa, was able to
withstand both internal and external pressures until 1980, when, after
a long struggle and a period of complex political transition, a new
government, ruled by the black majority, took office. On April 17,
1980, Southern Rhodesia became an independent nation as the
Republic of Zimbabwe.
The process of decolonization in Namibia, formerly South
West Africa, was not completed until 1990. Originally a German
colony, South West Africa was mandated to the Union (now
Republic) of South Africa after World War I. Following World War
II South Africa chose to maintain the status quo rather than
administer the territory under the trusteeship system and refused to
allow UN surveillance over its administration.
In 1950 the International Court of Justice determined that South
Africa had an obligation to submit reports to the UN. The court, in
1962, declared the application of apartheid policies in Namibia
illegal. In 1971 the court ruled that the continued presence of South
Africa in the territory was illegal because a General Assembly
resolution in 1966 had terminated its mandate, turning over the
administration of the territory to a UN Council for South West Africa
(subsequently named the Council for Namibia) the following year.
During the late 1970s and the 1980s, negotiations with South Africa
were based on Security Council Resolution 385, calling for UN-
supervised elections in the territory. Negotiations to prepare for
elections were carried out through a group of five Western nations,
in cooperation with key African governments, and through the
secretary-general and the UN special representative for Namibia.
These negotiations were complicated by open fighting between the
 39
South African government and liberation groups and by
disagreement over the role to be played by the South West Africa
People's Organization (SWAPO), a black African nationalist group.
In December 1988, South Africa formally agreed to allow Namibia
to become independent in a compromise that also included the
removal of Cuban troops from Angola. Open elections for a
constituent assembly were held under UN supervision in November
1989, and Namibia attained independence on March 21, 1990.
South African Apartheid The end of the Portuguese Empire
and the emergence of Zimbabwe created pressures on South Africa
to settle the Namibia question. The conditions for settlement,
however, were related to South African determination to maintain its
discriminatory policies of apartheid within its own borders despite
condemnation from the world community and the bitter antagonism
of the black states of Africa, most of which have gained their
independence since 1960. The problem of apartheid was on the UN
agenda from the time it was propagated by the South African
government in 1948 as an official policy. It was consistently
condemned as a crime against humanity despite the South African
argument that it was a domestic matter and therefore outside UN
jurisdiction.
Although South Africa remained a member of the UN, since
1970 its delegations' credentials were not accepted, thus barring its
participation in the General Assembly. The assembly also
recommended that South Africa be excluded from all international
organizations and conferences. These efforts to ostracize the nation
in order to bring about desired changes were centred in the UN
Special Committee Against Apartheid, which coordinated worldwide
efforts against the discriminatory policy. In 1977 the Security
Council established a mandatory arms embargo on South Africa, and
the General Assembly later called for wider economic sanctions.
The attack on apartheid was a central, unifying issue for the
black African states, the single largest regional voting group in the
UN. The UN provided a world forum to put pressure on those
countries that continued to have diplomatic and economic relations
with South Africa, as well as on the nation itself. By the end of 1991
the legal basis of apartheid had been abolished, but blacks still
lacked political rights, including the right to vote. By 1993 blacks
and whites were meeting to negotiate a new constitution, and in
October the UN voted to lift all sanctions. South Africa held its first
democratic elections in which blacks could vote in April 1994, and
 40
African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela was elected as the
country's first black president.
THE UN AND TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT: The UN
has frequently been involved in the difficult early stages of political
independence, when most new nations have requested large-scale
economic and social assistance. Economic and social activities now
constitute the most extensive part of the UN's work; more than 85
per cent of the budget and staff are devoted to activities that fall into
three broad categories. First, the ECOSOC serves as a forum for
broad discussions of economic and social problems and for
coordination of the UN programmes and those of the specialized
agencies. Second, to support both ECOSOC and the General
Assembly, information and investigatory services are provided by a
staff and special study groups, including standing bodies of
ECOSOC such as the Statistical, Population, and Human Rights
commissions. Third, the UN is responsible for operating programmes
such as UNDP and UNICEF and for subsidiary organs such as
UNCTAD, created to carry out specific responsibilities approved by
the General Assembly.
The economic activities also must be seen as part of the
entire UN System, including subsidiary organs and committees and
the specialized agencies. In turn, the specialized agencies can be
divided into two groups. The financial institutions—the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction
and Development (IBRD; part of the World Bank group)—are
responsible for making loans to member states. The IMF permits UN
members to support the value of their currencies by covering
temporary deficits in their balance of payments. The World Bank
helps to finance long-range development projects. The functional
agencies—such as UNESCO, WHO, and the FAO—are responsible
for international cooperation and technical assistance in their fields
of expertise.
Funding and Development: The first development
programme in the UN was a modestly funded programme of
technical assistance, established in 1949. In 1952, largely on the
initiative of Asian and Middle Eastern member states, a UN
committee proposed a Special United Nations Fund for Economic
Development (SUNFED) to provide grants-in-aid and low-interest
loans to supplement the limited, relatively high-interest loans
available through the World Bank. The SUNFED proposal was
rejected by the industrialized countries whose financial contributions
 41
were essential for its success. In response to the increasing financial
needs of developing nations, however, the International
Development Association (IDA) was established in 1960 as an
affiliate of the World Bank, mainly was to provide long-term, low-
interest loans.
The industrialized countries preferred to provide aid through
the mechanism of the World Bank because of the difference in
voting procedures between the UN and the financial institutions. The
UN proceeds on the basis of one nation, one vote; in the financial
institutions, voting is weighted by monetary contributions. As
countries in Asia and Africa have gained political independence,
developing nations have been increasingly able to wield majority
control in the UN, particularly in the General Assembly; in the
financial institutions, however, the industrial countries, as the major
contributors, retain a voting majority. Thus, Third World countries
have sought to shift greater authority for development financing from
the World Bank and the IMF to the UN, a move that the major
powers have opposed. This is one of the main points of contention
between the two groups.
In 1959 a Special Fund was created as a limited version of
the SUNFED proposal. The Special Fund was restricted to relatively
small preinvestment grants to be used in the first stage of larger
projects that might later become eligible for more extensive funding
from the World Bank, IDA, or other sources. In 1966 the Special
Fund and the earlier technical assistance programme were combined
into the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). By the
mid-1980s, UNDP was carrying out more than 5,000 projects funded
through voluntary contributions from member states.
UNDP is an example of an agency that handles funding,
operational, and coordinating functions. It operates under a
governing council composed of representatives of 48 member states
(21 industrialized and 27 developing countries), which meets twice a
year to approve new projects. UNDP projects form part of 3- to 5-
year “country programmes” that are drawn up by recipient countries
in connection with their national development plans. The projects are
then usually executed by other departments of the UN or by the
specialized agencies; educational projects, for example, will be
executed by UNESCO and health projects by WHO.
Since the 1960s the General Assembly has tried to give
greater direction to development programmes by establishing goals
and procedures in a series of so-called development decades for the
 42
1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. For each decade, the General Assembly
passed a broadly conceived resolution to serve as a set of guidelines
for the 10-year period. A major goal of these resolutions has been to
increase the amount of development funding available from all
sources.
UN development programmes are part of a much wider
network of assistance that also includes regional and nationally
organized programmes. At the same time, developing countries must
still supply most of the capital, through savings and foreign earnings,
for their economic growth. Therefore, development assistance has
been increasingly related to general conditions in the world economy
—especially those conditions under which developing nations
engage in foreign trade and earn foreign capital from exporting raw
materials and manufactured goods.
The relation between development assistance and trade was
particularly emphasized in the work carried out in the UN Economic
Commission for Latin America in the 1950s. By the early 1960s the
connection was widely accepted by the developing countries that
took the initiative in the General Assembly for establishing
UNCTAD in 1964. Just before the first session of UNCTAD, 77
developing nations issued a statement of goals, saying that
“International trade could become a more powerful instrument . . . of
economic development not only through the expansion of the
traditional exports of the developing countries, but also through the
development of markets for their share of world exports under
improved terms of trade”.
UNCTAD is a subsidiary organ of the General Assembly,
the purpose of which is to promote international trade, especially in
order to accelerate development in the countries of Asia, Africa, and
Latin America. All UN members belong to UNCTAD, which meets
once every four years in a general conference. Besides the staff, the
permanent machinery includes a Trade and Development Board
made up of members proportionally representing four groups of
states: the Afro-Asian group; the industrialized states with market
economies; Latin American countries; and the republics of Eastern
Europe and the former USSR.
In negotiations within UNCTAD or in the General
Assembly, the Afro-Asian and Latin American countries
traditionally constituted the “South” in contending with the position
taken by the industrialized market economies of the “North”. In this
“North-South” dialogue over world economic relations, the USSR
 43
and its allies participated only marginally. Consistent with
Communist ideology, the USSR generally argued that the state of the
world economy was the result of earlier imperialist conditions; thus,
it was the Western powers' responsibility to compensate for the
exploitation of their former colonies. The terms of this debate, and its
protagonists, have changed with the collapse of European
Communism and accelerating economic development in certain areas
of the “South”.
Since 1964 UNCTAD activities have largely focused on
reforms of the world economy that would enhance the position of
developing countries. The first is the Integrated Programme for
Commodities (IPC), which involves the negotiation of agreements to
ensure stable prices for primary commodities exported by developing
nations. Sudden drops in the world prices of tin, copper, or coffee,
for example, can drastically reduce the foreign earnings of countries
for which these might be the sole exportable commodities. Related to
the IPC, another reform is the establishment of a Common Fund to
be used to finance stocks of such commodities so that the world
supply can also be regulated to avoid fluctuations in prices.
UNCTAD also advocates a lessening of protectionist measures
directed against exports of manufactured products from developing
countries. The world's major trading nations have generally lowered
tariffs over the years through arrangements worked out under the
auspices of theGeneral Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and
the World Trade Organization (WTO). These, however, operate on
the basis of reciprocal tariff reductions, a condition that places
developing nations, which are only in an early stage of
industrialization, at a disadvantage.
Although the position of the major powers on the UNCTAD
proposals has shifted over the years from complete rejection to a
reluctant acceptance in principle, actual implementation of these
measures has been delayed. Agreements on individual commodities
have provided no assurance of stable prices; the Common Fund has
not been financed; and governments in many industrialized nations
have been increasingly reluctant to allow imports on a preferential
basis that would compete with the products of their own industries.
In response, the developing countries have launched a bolder, more
political attack on the structure of the world economy by calling for a
new international economic order.
The New International Economic Order The elements of a
new order were spelled out in resolutions passed during two special
 44
sessions of the General Assembly in 1974 and 1975. The resolutions
were preceded, however, by two profound changes in economic
conditions.
The first change was a general deterioration of the world
economy beginning in the late 1960s and continuing into the 1970s.
From the end of World War II until the mid-1960s, a historic period
of growth had occurred in the world economy, especially in the
Western market economies and Japan, under US leadership. The rate
of growth began to slacken by the end of the 1960s, when the United
States suffered a series of deficits in balance of payments, severely
weakening its own economy and those of its major trading partners,
as well as its capability to dominate the world economy. This
recession also affected the developing countries that depended on the
Western nations not only for development assistance but also as
markets for their exports and sources of finished goods, especially
technologically advanced items.
A second change began in 1973, with the drastic rise in oil
prices initiated by the members of the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries, or OPEC. First created in 1960, OPEC
represents the world's major producers of petroleum—a group of
developing countries from the Middle East, Africa, and South
America that controlled a resource critical to the highly
industrialized economies. Their dependence on this vital resource
was dramatized by the price hike at the very time when the structure
of economic relations among the industrialized nations was
changing. The success of OPEC gave developing nations the
incentive to demand a restructuring of economic relations in which
they could gain greater influence over the rules governing
international trade.
The New International Economic Order (NIEO) is embodied
in four General Assembly resolutions that, taken as a whole,
incorporate the goal of the development decades to increase the level
of financial assistance with the UNCTAD programme for stabilizing
commodity prices and opening new markets to developing countries.
The other aims of the NIEO for developing nations include greater
self-sufficiency, fuller participation in the IMF and World Bank, an
increased share of world trade and level of industrialization,
protection of their resources through international codes governing
the conduct of multinational corporations, and a gradual shifting of
the pattern of exchange to reflect more fully the interdependence of
nations.
 45
The NIEO represents a long-range set of so-called Third
World aspirations that challenge the more established interests of the
industrialized nations. In 1980 the General Assembly voted to
convene another special session to review progress towards the
NIEO and prepare for a new set of global negotiations on economic
issues. After almost a year of preliminary discussions, the assembly
could not agree on an agenda and procedures for a global conference,
and the special session ended with no concrete results. Substantial
differences remain on procedural issues, including the use of the UN,
as opposed to the IMF and World Bank, as the main forum for
negotiation on financial matters. The relevance of the whole NIED
programme is also now subject to review with many Third World
nations in the Pacific Rim and Latin America developing at speed in
the 1990s and a general shift in economic thinking in favour of the
free market as a motor for development.
THE ROLE OF THE UN: The UN today is both more and
less than its founders anticipated. It is less because, from the close of
World War II to the end of the 1980s, the rivalry between the United
States and the USSR exposed the weakness of great-power
unanimity in matters of peace and security. It is more because the
rapid breakup of colonial empires from the 1940s to the 1970s
created a void in the structure of international relations that the UN,
in many areas, was able to fill.
Even during the period of superpower rivalry, the UN helped
ease East-West tensions. Through its peacekeeping operations, for
example, it was able to insulate certain areas of tension from direct
great-power intervention. The UN also established several
committees on disarmament and was involved in negotiating treaties
to ban nuclear weapons in outer space and the development of
biological weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency has
helped to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons by inspecting
nuclear installations to monitor their use. Major arms-control
measures, however, such as the Partial Test Ban Treaty (1963), the
Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (1968), the
Strategic Arms Limitation talks (SALT) of 1972 and 1979, and the
Strategic Arms Reduction treaties (START) of 1991 and 1993 were
achieved through direct negotiations between the superpowers.
Beyond providing peacekeeping forces, the UN has played a
wider role in the transition to statehood in a few critical areas. It has
been a major forum through which newly independent states have
begun to participate in international relations, giving them
 46
opportunities to represent their interests outside their immediate
regions, to join coalitions of nations with similar interests, and to
escape the limited relationships of their earlier colonial connections.
One problem facing the UN in the 1990s is the feeling in some
Western nations that it has become an instrument of the developing
countries and thus is no longer a viable forum for fruitful
negotiations.
Many global problems have been considered in a series of
special UN-sponsored conferences, including the Conference on the
Human Environment (1972), the World Population Conference
(1974), the World Conference of the International Women's Year
(1975), the Conference on Human Settlements, or Habitat (1976), the
Conference on Desertification (1977), the World Assembly on
Ageing (1982), and the World Summit for Children (1990). In 1992
more than 100 heads of state and government—the largest
assemblage of national leaders in history—met in Rio de Janeiro for
the Conference on Environment and Development, or Earth Summit.
The collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the
USSR between 1989 and 1991 posed new challenges and
opportunities for the UN. On the one hand, the end of the rivalry
between the United States and USSR enabled the UN to assume a
more active role in seeking to resolve disputes in Cambodia, the
former Yugoslavia, Western Sahara, and the Persian Gulf. On the
other hand, the Yugoslav civil war and the ethnic conflicts within
and between the former Soviet republics exemplified the threats to
peace and stability presented by the breakup of the Communist
world. How to pay for an expanded peacekeeping role and how to
accommodate the increased political and economic influence of
Germany and Japan were also challenges for the UN in the 1990s.
After more than 40 years of international discussion, the
establishment of a new post—High Commissioner for Human Rights
—was approved in 1993. Appointed by the secretary-general, the
commissioner would be responsible for monitoring worldwide
respect for fundamental human rights.
The United Nations is not a world government; rather, it is a very
flexible instrument through which nations can cooperate to solve
their mutual problems. Whether they do cooperate and use the UN
creatively depends on how both their governments and their peoples
view relations with others and how they envision their place in the
future of humankind.
 47
Urgent Need For a New System of Education : Its
Shape and Prospects
There are no two opinions about the fact that the existing
system of education is in shambles. Chief Executive General Pervez
Musharraf has severely criticised the present system of education in
his briefing to the students of a private institution. Almost daily the
colleges and universities are getting into news not for research or
scholastic achievements, but for strikes, protest processions. Hardly
any university or college in any part of the country has been totally
free from this infection. The students are on the warpath. They are
out to fight battles, for which any excuse is good enough. The main
reason for youth’s rebelliousness is that the syllabi and text-books
are hopelessly outdated. The students find them pointless and
irrelevant to the present needs and future requirements. The courses
are just time-fillers; their only aim is to get the label or the degree
(by fair means or foul), which is supposed to be a passport – often a
fake one – to some employment. Since the students feel that their
books and instruction will not be of any use to them in later life, they
treat them most casually, unable to put their heart into class work.
Hot action and excitement attract them. Since the degree and not
knowledge is the goal, they go in for shortcuts, like ‘sure shot’ guess
papers and mass copying in the examination. Though these
questionable means, mediocre scholars score good marks and
divisions, and serve as a disincentive to serious study. Examinations
were meant for education; now the whole educational process is
geared only for examinations. This education develops neither
character nor discipline; it inculcates neither initiative nor self-
reliance in young boy sand girls. It is just a formality, a status
symbol and a doubtful investment for future gains. A former
Chairman of the University Grants Commission said that education
standards had touched such a rock bottom, that anything would be a
change for the better.
For the last three decades, we have been hearing sermons on
the need for a revolutionary changes and complete overhaul of the
education system. We are told that system fathered by Macaulay for
sub-continent (before the division of British India) is absolutely out
of tune for the present day needs of independent Pakistan. Granted.
But then no one had the inventiveness and originality to give us the
shape of a new education that was expected to replace the old
system. And though everyone advocated change, yet the moment any
 48
real change was proposed, all the innate conservatism of the
educational community came to the defence of the system, of which
they themselves were such ‘worthy’ products. Numerous educational
committees and conferences went into all these questions and
thought their duty ended with the presentation of voluminous reports,
which gathered cobwebs and which few read and the country was
none the wiser for them. So we talked revolution and practised
conservatism.
Since the situation is desperate, something has to be done
immediately and the government should embarked on the
implementation of the new scheme. Its three chief features call for
attention: (i) Schooling should last 12 years (10+2+3 scheme) and
that should be the terminus for most students. The stress should be
on vocation train and fitting the pupil to earn his livelihood as soon
as he leaves school. (ii) Admissions to colleges and universities
should be severely restricted. Only genuine students interested in
academic (not politician-students) or the uninterested mass) should
be admitted, and (iii) to break this imbroglio of mass copying and
completely outdated syllabuses and courses, autonomous colleges
should be created, which would fix their own courses and hold their
own examinations and award their own degrees. They would be mini
universities.
Take the school reorganisation first. The first stage up to 10th
class will impart general education. During the next two years, stress
will be on vocational subjects such as agriculture, radio engineering,
carpentry, repair of electrical gadget, dairy-farming and three dozen
such topics, out of which the pupil could choose one or more,
depending on his inclination and local talent and market available.
This part will consist of practise work only. It is called Basic
Education which means ‘learning by doing’. So much activity would
relieve tensions of adolescence and enable the pupil to be a
productive and earning member of society immediately on leaving
the school. The system of examination and evaluation is also to be
changed. No student will fail under this system. He will be warded a
Grade in each separate subject, for the guidance of the future
employer: G-1 outstanding, G-2 very good, G-3 Good, G-4 Fair and
G-5 Poor. A student may get G-5 in one subject but G-1 in his
favourite subject or special field. It is a sin to give a purely literary
education in Pakistan where 80% of population is agriculture and
10% industrial. This ‘useless’ education (Cardinal Newman regarded
this ‘uselessness’) as its greatest good point) was devised in England
for the elite or sons of lords who just wanted to refine their intellect
 49
and led no need of earning their bread in those feudal days. This new
education can help the poor rural masses or proletariat of Pakistan.
The new system will teach our pupil innovation and resourcefulness
and they will create self-employment where apparently no
opportunities existed. The Government of Pakistan should introduce
this new system in all the Central Schools.
The next main feature is restricting entry to higher
education. Huge crowds in colleges and universities must be cut to
size, else they turn into a mob and commit anti-social acts like arson
and violence under cover of anonymity. Most of these students join
only to fail. The U. G. C report says that at some universities, the
failures are 70-80%. That means that 80% of money spent on
education just goes down to the drain.
The third item relates to autonomous colleges. Well-
established colleges will receive that status. They could prescribe or
change their course with quick judgement and swiftness (in the
universities such a process takes years) and hold their own
examination or devise their own methods of continuous evaluation
and internal assessment. The danger is that since 80% of education is
imparted by non-governmental colleges and most of them flaunt
caste and communal names, they may start giving easier courses and
awarding high grades to help their community. They may keep the
interest of their community above that of education. The students
may have jolly good time and leave with undeserved degrees, and
grades. Another danger is that since students have little confidence in
the impartiality of their teachers they oppose the internal assessment,
where their own teachers are examiners. It will be recalled that
university after university introduced internal assessment, and each
time it had withdrawn in the face of mounting student protests and
opposition. It is unrealistic to be blind to proven facts. Students have
the impression that under this system marks and grades go according
to personal favouritism, money power and for caste and communal
considerations. They don’t expect justice: justice should only be
done, but it should also seem to be done. For this reason, this
proposal remained a non-starter.

Strikes and Lockouts – should they be banned?

Strikes and work stoppage are the order of the day. On all
sides we see factories, offices, colleges and universities
intermittently closed, protest processions, slogan-shouting, pitched
up with large union banners and sometime hunger-strikers. There are
 50
fasts unto death to have the demands conceded, though onlookers
cast doubt on the genuineness of fasts; in any case, no hunger-striker
has the intention of dying; it is a pressure tactic. Workers of water
works struck work and Pakistan’s capital went thirsty; electricity
workers go on strike in support of their ‘genuine’ demands and cities
are plunged in darkness and wheels of industry stop impeding
production. Hospital employees resort to strikes in support of their
cause and the sick and the dying suffer grievously, though they have
nothing to do with employer-employee dispute. In the factories, trade
unions order strikes to extort more payments and privileges for their
members. It seems that every section wants to earn more by the
weapon of strike. No one wants to be kept out of the strike news.
Buses go off the roads and thousands of passengers are stranded.
For this chaotic state of affair, the government and
administrations too are to be blamed. Workers have known from
long and repeated experience that every demand, however,
exaggerated or unreasonable, is surely accepted if pressed with a
prolonged strike, violence and hooliganism; also no request however
legitimate or just is ever bothered about, if presented only
constitutionally by application or petition. Even employees who in
their heart of hearts feel that their strike is morally wrong join it. For
it will mean increased salary or more cash and more perks. Who
would be a fool to miss such gains, only for the sake of a moral
principal?
The strikers want safety first. Strike means holiday at will,
with full pay and allowanced. If strikers burn buses, stop trains,
assault the black sheep and hold the community to ransom, no action
must be taken against them, for these are trade union activities. If the
police intervene to enforce law and order, there will be a loud
clamour against ‘brutal’ lathi charge by the police and the demand
for a judicial enquiry by a high court judge. If any lawbreakers are
arrested for committing a crime, the first condition is that they must
be released immediately and unconditionally. Trade unionists claim
to be above the law of the land. Law applies only to the dumb driven
millions.
During the emergency, there were no strikes, for then going
on a strike was risky; strikers lost their money, they lost their jobs
and some were imprisoned. The strike leader became sycophants of
the government. Workers’ bonus was withdrawn. Their overtime was
cancelled, some of their underserved privileges were scrapped, yet C.
P. I and other trade unionists made no protest. Strike with perfect
 51
safety is their method. A few minor strikes were there, but there were
no headlines in press, no advertisements about them plastered on
walls and roads, no noisy processions or demonstrations (they are a
fun!), so such strikes died a natural death for want of publicity. In
ordinary times, strikes have a snowballing effect attracting more and
more workers’ unions and the loud support of opposition parties and
their leaders.
Recently, a countrywide strike for indefinite period was
announced by All Pakistan Traders Association against the
imposition of GST (General Sales Tax). Main markets of the entire
country remained closed for seventeen days. They were losing 1.5
billion rupees per day. But the present government continued the
process of documentation in the country in spite of this longest
recorded strike, and traders badly failed to assert themselves. The
whole public supported the government action; none supported the
cause of the strikers.
Take the case of colleges and universities. Some of them
remain strikebound for weeks and months, even years. No student
wants to lose his year for strikes over non-issues, no parent wants to
lost his son’s precious year and his own money spent on fees and
hostel expenses, because of these strikes. But college can make the
strike complete. The black sheep are assaulted, for breaking the unity
of the student movement they are traitors to the students cause 95%
students do not want long strikes and loss of a precious year, but they
are helpless in the grip of the strike monster. Only the strike leaders
call off the strike and they have other axe to grind, though they may
shout about students’ interests and students’ cause.
Should strikes be banned? In Communist countries strikes
are banned, since they injure the fatherland by stopping production; –
and Communist states are workers’ paradise.
In the early days of industrialisation, capitalists exploited
labour, underpaid them and dismissed them at their will and whim.
To answer this challenge, strikes and trade unionism were born.
Today they have become a big vested interest, fighting against the
whole community for their class gain. Public opinion does not
support to decide in the end. Big empires and proud dictators have
fallen, when public opinion turned against them.
When workers go on strike, some time proprietors declare a
lockout so that the workers get no salary. In July 1989, there was a
strike by the employees of a newspaper chain. The management
declared a lockout that continued for 2-3 months. The workers
 52
wanted to get back to work, but there was a lockout. The newspapers
too were losing 20 lacks per day. Strikes and lockouts are both
unwise. They should not be resorted to except as a last resort. Today
they are the first resort. Also compulsory arbitration tribunes must
ensure that justice is done to workers and employees.

Life is Action, Not Contemplation

What is this life? A struggle or a dream? Perhaps both. If it
is the one, life is action and if it is the other, life is contemplation. It
is an old conception that life is a stage and men, women merely
players. Rich or poor, all players must play their parts and act them
well for in action only is their life.
“The world’s a theatre. The earth, a stage
Placed in the midst: where both prince and page,
Both rich and poor, fool, wise man. base and high,
All act their parts in life’s short tragedy.”
We can match these lines from Shakespeare’s As You Like It:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances:
The acts being seven ages.
Action is recognised a vital even though its end is not clear. Whether
we choose our action or we are driven to do them from within it is all
the same. Since death ends all, shall we travel towards death like the
Lotus-eaters or like Ulysses?
Macbeth says:
Out, out, brief candle
Life’s but a walking shadow, poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound or fury,
Signifying nothing.
But what about these lines?
Your heads must come
To the cold tomb;
Only actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in their dust.
 53
The two aspects of action and contemplation constitute life; they are
inextricable. Even in the mildest life of “simple living and high
thinking” action has a part to play. But what about the mystery and
complexity of the tragic element in life. Will action solve it? No, we
need contemplation: “the eye of solitude”?
“And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.”
Too much thinking is a disease akin to melancholia. It keeps us
depressed, gloomy and dyspeptic. It gives us a distaste for action and
life and accordingly we ruminate on the miseries of self. Life appears
to be a cheat, a purposeless puzzle, a tragic-comedy at best but no
more. We feel like Hamlet “that this goodly frame, the earth, seems
to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look
you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and
pestilent congregation of vapours,” and man, only ‘the quintessence
of dust”. A gloomy mind has no eye for romance or beauty which are
the two effective methods with men of action to escape the uglier
aspects of life. A pessimist always concentrating on the seamy side
of things takes a jaundiced view and loses all love and regard for the
heroic. A spider working inward soon envelops himself in a web:
similarly merely abstract thinking confuses the brain.
How has the world progressed? The world’s thinkers and the
actors share honour equally. In the domain of theoretical knowledge
thinkers are superior but in the sphere of practical knowledge, that is
research or discovery, action counts. Contemplation suggests the
way but action treads on it.
“Play up, play up the game.”
Let us by all means contemplate but let us not do so at the cost of
energetic living. We have to conquer the ‘self’ within us and the
whole world around.
Action leads us to blessedness and contemplation either to the
lotus-eaters “dreamful ease” or the philosopher’s “Nirvana”.
Existence or isolation we have to coo between the two. Pakistan’s
past is rich in the fruits of contemplation but the present needs
action. Let us be up and doing and yoke our country to the needs of
the present.
 54
The Choice of a Career
OR
The Profession you Intend to Enter and the Reasons
for Your Choice
I do not choose a career; the career will choose me. I aspire
to the best and the highest of all will depend on luck and chance.
Every parent, when his child arrives at the secondary stage
of school education, begins to worry about the career that the latter is
going to follow. Every parent fondly believes that his child is
destined for an exceptional career.
The truth, however, is quite different. In nine cases out of ten
it is impossible to tell while a child is at school, what particular
occupation will most suit his nature and capacity, and for many of us
quite a number of occupations will quit as well as another.
Let us first dispose of children who are exceptionally
endowed, the geniuses. Of course a genius depends upon
opportunities like every other child, but even if the circumstances in
which he is born are not favourably to him, he will by mere force of
will, and hard work, win his way to that position in life to which his
abilities entitles him. Take the case of Charles Dickens. He started
life by sticking labels on gum bottles, and the circumstances under
which he was born were enough to crush many men, yet he came to
be one of the greatest literary figures of the nineteenth century. Lord
Reading, before he before he became Viceroy of India, was a sailor,
a stock exchange broker, a solicitor, and a politician. Genius will
chalk out a career for itself and force its way to the occupation that
suits it best. So the parent who thinks that his child is a genius does
not need to worry about him.
For others, the ordinary children, careers are of two types –
the secure and the insecure. The secure careers are those in which a
man starts with a fixed salary, progresses with regular increments,
and ends up with a pension or provident fund deposit at a certain age.
The prizes in such careers are few, but so are the risks, and many
people prefer to have a low-paid job which is secure to the dangers
and glories of an independent profession. Some people go into these
secure jobs, not because they cannot afford to take any risks, but
because they are bent upon doing some literary or scientific work,
and cannot find the leisure for doing that without an assured
 55
competency. But such people are few. Included in the secure careers
are Banking, Insurance and Teaching.
For children with the adventurous impulses strongly
developed, there opens out the broad highway of commerce or the
professions, such as Law or Medicine. In these everything depends
upon the individual. A few days ago I was talking to a brilliant
young man who preferred business to the administrative service. I
told him that his chance of getting into the administrative service was
a particularly good one and that the administrative service was
secure. He said, “The moment I enter into any regular service my
salary will be fixed, the increment will be fixed, the pension at
retirement will be fixed, and my path in life will be chalked out for
me even down to the smallest detail. That will be death. No, I will
live my own life according to my own lights and, I hope it will be a
greater success in business than I can ever be in the administrative
service.”
It is best for those who want to go into independent
professions to stick to them to the end. It is a temptation difficult to
resist for a young man who is starting life, let us say as a doctor, not
to accept a job in a druggists’ concern, or as a physician in a small
almshouse, or reformatory. In these jobs the employment is snug and
easy, with a comfortable living and a pretty salary. The first
drawback of such position is that they take away the most precious
years of a man’s life and let slip chances which can never be recalled
of gaining a firm footing in the profession. And moreover, such
position can never be depended on longer than those in power and
their interest to keep them so. Employers in private institutions are
social demagogues and most often unscrupulous opportunists. Such
employments retard one’s progress, and sometimes give one a
second rate reputation that is hard to outlive.
The tragedy of the open professions does not lie in those
who come into them of their own free will, but in those who are
thrust into them against their will, only because they have no other
opening for their activities. Those who hold competitive
examinations seem to be lacking in a sense of humour and
proportion. Take a very ordinary examination – the competition for
the P. C. S Judiciary Branch. Some years ago second class law
graduates (non-agriculturists) were not allowed to sit in the
competition. A student who got 360 marks in his L. L. B
Examination was allowed to sit in P. C. S Examinations as a matter
of course. But a student who got 359 marks had no such privilege.
 56
Did it mean that the former was abler than the latter? How can those
unadventurous souls who wanted to become sub-judges and cannot
do so, take to the legal profession wholeheartedly! They simply swell
the number of “failures” in the profession and frighten others out of
it.
This is not to say that the professions are easy or without
risks. The most risky of all professions is journalism. It has the virtue
of being the most democratic. For a man with brains and ability there
is no profession like journalism, for such a man can always count
upon getting to the forefront. But the sea of journalism is strewn with
wrecks. Here is the opinion of a great English writer, and a great
journalist, who had struggled all his life in this profession:
“Oh you heavy-laden, who at this hour sit down to the
cursed travail of the pen; writing, not because there is something in
your mind, in your heart, which must need be uttered, but because
the pen is the only tool you can handle, your only means of earning
bread! Year after year the number of you is multiplied; you crowd
the doors of publishers and solicitors, hustling, grappling,
exchanging maledictions. Oh sorry spectacle, grotesque and heart
breaking!
“Innumerable are the men and women now writing for
bread, who have not the least chance of finding in such a work a
permanent livelihood. They took to writing because they knew not
what else to do, or because the literary calling tempted them by its
independence and dazzling prizes. With a lifetime of dread
experience behind me, I say that he who encourages any young man
or woman to look for his living to ‘literature’ commits no less than a
crime. If my voice had any authority I would cry this truth aloud
wherever men can hear.”

CULTURE: Its Meanings and Value

“Culture is contact with the best that has been said and
thought in the world.” – Arnold
To be truly cultured a man should know at least one foreign
language. As Pakistanis are compelled to learn English, but it should
have been better if we had learnt French. Even now those of us, who
have the opportunity and the necessary will, should waste no time in
taking up a serious study of French. Montesquieu used to say that he
had never known a pain or a distress which he could not soothe by
half an hour of a good book; and perhaps it is no exaggeration to say
 57
that a man who can read French with ease and quick comprehension
need never have a dull hour. The chief characteristics of French
literature is its agreeableness. And the French language has a genius
for clarity and order.
One of the marks of the cultured man is that he amuses
himself in a rational rather than an irrational manner, and there is no
rational amusement so pleasant and at the same time so profitable as
turning over the leaves of a French Classic – Racine or Voltaire or
Sainte-Beuve. These authors are exquisite and instructive, models of
clear writing and full of ideas. Those who are capable of extensive
interests and willing to enter into the great spheres of philosophical
thought and history should study French language and literature.
Next to French language and literature, I would place a study
of universal history. It is not necessary to take it up in detail and
study the labyrinthine shifts of party intrigues in different countries.
First of all, one should learn history in bare outline – the outline
should be bold and rapid, emphasising the great chains of events, and
the decisive movements. For a Pakistanis it will be first necessary to
study the history of Asia in outline, before he reads the history of
sub-continent in detail. Similarly, an Englishman should read
European history before tackling the history of England. This point
has been well brought out by Freeman in his Unit of History. He
says: “We are learning that European history, from its first
glimmerings to our own day, is one unbroken drama, no part of
which can be rightly understood without reference to the other parts
which come before and after it. We are learning that of this great
drama Rome is the centre, the point to which all roads lead and from
which all roads lead no less. The whole of independent Greece
stands on one side of it; the world of Europe stands on the other. But
the history, alike of the great centre itself, and of its satellites on
either side can never be fully grasped except from a point of view
wide enough to take in the whole group and to mark the relations of
each of its members to the centre and to one another.”
A word about superficial reading. I can quite imagine a
young man, after reading this essay, chalking out a course of study
for himself and resolutely sitting down to go through it. But such
reaching is of no use. It is like rain falling on a sloping roof or water
poured into a sieve. Knowledge is useless unless we are able to make
use of it in a definite form. Before we take up any study seriously we
should have a clear picture of our destination. It is a good plan when
we have read a book, to sit down and make summary of all that we
 58
have remembered of it. The best plan is that pursued by Gibbon.
After glancing over the title, subject or design of a book Gibbon
would take a pen and write roughly what questions he expected to
find answered in it, what difficulties solved, what kind of
information gathered. Such practice keeps us from reading with the
eye only without deep attention.
The careful reader unconsciously develops a valuable
attitude. Even if he reads a book with which he is not in sympathy
and agreement, he learns a good deal by asking himself – why did
this man come to hold such a view? This kind of self-examination is
true culture, and gives a man seriousness, depth, and moderation in
judgement, which are the signs of a cultured man.
In the studies of a cultured man I give an important place to
philosophy. There are moments when every thoughtful man feels the
need of a scientific doctrine defining the ends of human life, of a
wisdom which should give some hope for the happiness of the
individual. Science is standing in pronounced opposition to our
traditional religions, and the result is that the more thoughtful
amongst us are turning more and more to philosophy as a
compensation for loss of religious faith. The cultured world, which
has lost the support afforded by religion, should seek it in
philosophy.
If a man diligently seeks to come into contact with the best
that has been thought and said in this world, whether by the way I
have suggested or in any other way, he will become simple and
unselfish. Culture is valuable, culture has meaning, because it leads
us to the service of our fellowmen, and we find no peace and
happiness except in working for them. Lord Morley has summed this
up in words which have the wings of poetry: “We cannot, like
Beethoven or Handel, lift the soul by the magic of divine melody
into the seventh heaven of ineffable vision and hope
incommensurable; we cannot, like Newton, weigh the far-off stars in
a balance, and measure the heavings of the eternal flood; we cannot,
like Voltaire, scorch up what is cruel and false, by a word as by a
flame, nor, like Milton or Burke, awaken men’s hearts with the notes
of an organ trumpet……… But what we can do – the humblest of
us………is by diligently, using our own minds and diligently
seeking to extend our own opportunities to others, to help to swell
that common tide; on the force and set of whose currents depends the
prosperous voyaging of humanity. When our names are blotted out
and our place knows us no more, the energy of such social service
 59
will remain like the unending stream of one of nature’s forces. The
thought that this is so may lighten the poor perplexities of our daily
life, and may even soothe the pang of its calamities: it lifts us from
our feet, as on wings, opening a large meaning to our public
endeavour; it makes the morning, as we wake to it, welcome, and the
evening like a soft garment as it wraps us about; it nerves our arm
with boldness against oppression and injustice and strengthens our
voice with deeper accents against falsehood, while we are yet in the
full noon of our days – yes, and perhaps it will shed some ray of
consolation, when our eyes are growing dim to it all, and we go
down into the valley of the dark shadow.”
Just as a cultured man loves knowledge for its own sake,
seeking not to make money by it, but to get refinement in personal
living, so he serves his fellowmen with no ulterior motive, without
hope of a reward either her or in the hereafter. He sees clearly the
errors of his own ways and seeks to warn others off them. His greater
happiness lies in learning wisdom and service of fellow beings.
One mark of a cultured man is that he is affectionate and at
the same time detached from the person he loves. I know only one
man who is uniformly affectionate to all and yet is never upset when
his affection is not returned. As the sun shines upon all and makes no
distinctions so the cultured man is kind to all without distinction.
Now this is a very hard test. I like some persons deeply and often in
a happy mood I stop and say: How much of this happiness is the
result of returned affection? And when my affection is not returned:
Is my heart chilled because so and so does not care for me? So I
think of the cultured man – only one I know and think: Let me be
like him. True affectionateness, like true civilisation, is the final fruit
and culmination of long endeavour. The truly cultured man wants
nothing from his fellowmen. He gives – service, affection,
considerateness, all that one man can give to another. And he does so
unconsciously and to all – as the sun shines for all, or the flower
opens for all. He realises the noble and hard truth: That devotion to
one or two is a poisonous thing – he must be devoted to all.

The Sporting Spirit

OR
True Sportsmanship
Who is the true sportsman? He, who plays a game in the
right spirit, for the sake of the joy which he gets in the game and not
 60
for the sake of winning. The true sportsman plays a game with his
full attention, never loses his temper, works with his team, and plays
according to the spirit of the rules of the game.
In our times the meaning of the word, sportsman, has been
unnecessarily extended. Sometimes this term signifies a person who
patronises some sport or game. For instance, the Agha Khan and
Lord Derby were called sportsmen, not because they ran races
themselves (they were too fat for that), but because they patronised
horseracing. People who neither play games themselves nor
patronise them, but only watch others play, also call themselves
sportsmen. The word “sportsman” should be taken to signify only
those who take an active part in games, and no others.
A clever Frenchman, de Gourey Laffam, is worth quoting in
this connection. He says: “If you want to call yourself a sportsman,
think whether –
1. You play the game for the game’s sake.
2. You play for your team or for yourself.
3. You carry out your captain’s order without question or
criticism.
4. You accept the umpire’s decision absolutely.
5. You win without swank and lose without groaning.
6. You would rather lose than do anything unfair.
A spectator, if he is a sportsman -
1. Will not refuse to cheer play by his opponents;
2. Will not boo the umpire if he gives a decision with which he
does not agree;
3. Will not want to see side win if it does not deserve it;
4. Will not quarrel with another spectator for backing the other
side.
Those men who go out with a gun to kill God’s creatures
have no right to be called sportsmen. In the early days of civilisation
it was necessary to kill many animals in order to clear the jungle, but
in many parts of the world this cruel necessity does not exist any
longer. There is no point in breeding animals especially for the
purpose of slaughtering them at one’s leisure for the fun of it. People
take pride in the number of animals they kill, and congratulate each
other upon it. Unnecessary cruelty coarsens a man and no true
sportsman should take part in stag-hunting; foxhunting, bullfighting
and bulbul fights. A sportsman must be just and merciful.
Should the sporting spirit be confined to games only, or
should it be taken into the larger concerns of life? Let us first hear a
 61
man who advocates taking the sporting spirit into life: “The quality
of sportsmanship is not on that is to be exhibited by the players and
the spectators on the playing-fields only. It has a much wider field of
practice. Sportsmanship is to be practised by all, in all the spheres of
life. We must ‘play the game’ in business as well as on the playing-
fields, in politics as well as in the stadium. There is to be no hard and
fast line dividing the regions where sportsmanship is necessary and
where it is not. The solution of the troubles of the world will come
when sportsmanship will flow from the playing-fields to the business
offices, the legislatures and conferences. When we work for our side
and not for ourselves, when we work for success but without injuring
of overreaching others, when we obey the rules of behaviour not
only in the letter but also in the spirit, when even the interests of our
association, community, or country, do not make us override the
interests of humanity; then, indeed, will be the millennium, when we
are sportsman all.”
It has given this quotation in full, lengthy though it is,
because it fully represents one point of view – that of the idealist,
who works not for today or tomorrow, but for the day after
tomorrow. So far no millennium has ever been realised, and if
sportsmanship is observed in every walk of life and by every
individual on this earth, we shall soon be in Utopia.
But the realists have something to say too. They say that in
this battle called life, what we need is not sportsmanship, but
strength, not humility or sportsmanship but power is the arbiter of all
differences and destinies. This view was expressed bluntly by
Bismarck who said that “There was no altruism among nations,” and
that modern issues are decided not by votes by rhetoric, but by blood
and iron. If life is a struggle for existence in which the fittest survive,
then strength is the ultimate virtue, and weakness the only fault.
Good is that which survives, which wins, bad is that which gives
way and fails. There is no room for the sporting spirit in this world.”
Which shall we prefer, Justice or Force? – Sportsmanship or
the theory of Darwin and Bismarck.
There is this ambiguity about force. We are never sure that it
will be used for purposes of Justice. Voltaire said, quite rightly:
“War is the greatest of all crimes; yet there is no aggressor who does
not colour his crime with the pretext of justice.”
Sportsmanship is another name for Justice or Fair Play;
when the Englishman says of something “This is not cricket,” he
means “This is not justice.” And what is Justice? This question has
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been answered at length by Plato in his Republic. Justice is not
strength, but harmonious strength – desires and men falling into that
order which constitutes intelligence and organisation; justice is not
the right of the stronger, but the effective harmony of the whole.
Sportsmanship is a virtue that exists in books. In actual
practice, very few sportsmen have it.

Novel Reading
OR
The Study of Fiction
Novel reading has become a popular pastime. To relax after
a day’s hard work, there is nothing more handy a novel or a detective
story. Life often proves too much for us and we seek the aid of our
imagination to escape from it. Reading is not a duty imposed on us;
it is a pleasure. Books exist to please, to entertain and to comfort us.
Some seek relaxation in intoxication through wine or gambling but
the reader of fiction quite harmlessly excites himself by an imaginary
story of love, intrigue or murder. Fiction, like poetry, provides us an
escape from this dark drab world and takes us into the land of
romance where beauty dwells, justice is done and there is no misery.
The majority of fiction readers resort to fiction for mental relief.
Sometimes, when we are not tired, we feel lonely, as for example, on
a journey. In an express train a novel is an invaluable partner: it
helps us to down the rattling of the puffing of the engine and to
forget the irksomeness of the journey. When we are engrossed in the
novel, we are hardly conscious of time passing till the porter shouts
out the name of our destination. Reading makes travel tolerable, you
hardly know how else to kill time on a railway journey. The ailing
patient, the convalescent and the attendant nurse find in novel
reading a matchless delight. Novel reading is light reading and puts
no strain on our mind or brain; on the other hand it is a palliative.
All novels are not fairy stories of love and romance. We
have the picaresque novel of adventure and travel. The reading of
these novels provides us not only with information about the
countries concerned but also the pleasant sensation of sojourning in
them. Sitting by the side of the singing kettle on the hearth we can
hunt wild game in the heart of Africa or the Sundarbans or climb on
the top of the Kamet, or drive into sea in Mr. Well’s apparatus. Such
novels are not meant to be a substitute for actual journey but as
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simulative of interest. To those whom a long journey is a forbidden
luxury they are more than a compensation.
Their novel with a purpose has various branches. The best
amongst them is the historic novels, which deal with a particular
period of history, a famous personality or an incident. When we read
these novels we live in those periods and move in their long and dead
society. Usually historical novels are pure fictitious romances with
an appeal to young minds. Scott’s Waverley Novels and Thackeray’s
Henry Esmond belong to separate groups. Another variety of this
type of novel is in which the author passes in review through
imaginary characters, the conflicting forces and the changing values
which mark an epoch. Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga describes the
disintegration of the Victorian society in England. Sinclair Lewis’
Bobbit and Main Street are its American kin. A minor offshoot of it
is the regional or provincial novel describing the characteristics of a
typical locality like Hardy’s Wessex novels and Arnold Bennett’s
Annal of the Five Towns series. We have the political novel in which
political strife is mirrored in symbols. Disraeli’s Consingsby or The
Flaming Sword by L. P. Jack are novels of this type. For those who
are of a humanitarian turn of mind we have the social novel with its
main objective of reforming society. Mrs. Gaskell’s Cranford,
Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and Dickens’s novel went a very long way
improving the social conditions of their times. The novelist has a
wide canvas at his command. He can gradually work up his plot and
resolve it into the desired manner. His weapon is persuasion through
winning our sympathy. He aims at change of heart, perseveres and
ultimately wins. The novelist’s field is not limited and he is free to
take up any problem that is likely to interest the reader. He treads on
slippery ground when he handles sex. Writers like Joyce, Lawrence
and even Aldous Huxley have sometimes been banned for young
readers. But I say to you – Do not be afraid; read them all, especially
Aldous Huxley. I am not exaggerating when I say that Huxley’s
After Many a Summer has thrown more light on many tangles of our
society than years and years of analysis and introspection. It is better
to abstain from sentimental types of fiction. Not only do they
produce unhealthy reactions but they also vitiate our taste for good
literature. Classical writers always deal with eternal problem of life:
of evil and of good. They invent characters, sometimes
individualised and sometimes types and through them as
mouthpieces voice their own feelings. Psychological fiction is a
recent production and specialises in the analytical study of human
character. Reading of such novels is a mental exercise; all the time
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we feel as if we were playing at chess. The human mind is ever
interesting. Jane Austen, George Eliot, Meredith give us beautiful
characters. The modern novel is psychological and deals with the
stream of consciousness.
Modern life has multiplied crime and scientific research has
made the detection of crime an art as well as a science. The detective
novels of Edgar Wallace have covered a vast ground from the
Moonstone of Wikie Collins. It is this type of novel which is very
popular today: it gives excitement and relaxation. Incidentally, it has
created a new character, Sherlock Holmes. The purely propaganda
novel has its votaries. War fiction too had its heyday. All Quiet on
the Western Front by Remarque had amazing sales.
Novel reading is regarded by the orthodox as sheer waste of
time. This is a mistaken notion. The variety of situation and the
diversity of characters in novels expand our outlook and broaden our
vision. Novels are cheap and are easily procured from every
circulating library or bookshop. Their very popularity shows that
reading them is common and conducive to happiness. The reader
with the discriminating eye avoids reading obscene and cheap
fiction. Just as too many sweet object produce bile, similarly an over-
dose of fiction gluts the appetite. Drama elevates and poetry refines
our mind but fiction, of the earthly, interests us in the living of life.
Novel reading rouses the taste for reading. After poetry
fiction is the greatest department of literature and should occupy an
honoured place on the shelves of every student.

Nuclear Energy – A curse OR a Blessing

The frightening prospect of the use of atomic energy for
future wars hangs like a noose round the neck of the modern man
who is busy stockpiling atomic devices in large numbers so that in
future war he may be able to conquer his adversary, but he fails to
think what will become of him and his own fellow beings living in
the broadly stretched continents of the world. A future war will not
discriminate between man and man, nation and nation or a big or a
small country. It will unleash terrible calamity on earth and
according to Mrs. Pearl Buck, “This ten million years old earth will
witness only two bangs, the result of a few remote carrying atomic
weapons and the whole civilisation will get destroyed”.
There is no doubt that even the tyrants shall die one day.
None has to live, but man should not contemplate on the destruction
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of human civilisation through mis-utilisation of the Nuclear Energy.
A poet says that
Some men with swords may reap the field
And plant fresh laurels when they kill;
But their strong nerves at last must yield;
They tame but one another still;
Early or late
They stoop to fate:
And must give up their murmuring breath,
When they, pale captives, creep to death.
Einstein told once that the discovery of atomic energy was
the greatest scientific victory of man, but he was doubtful it was
going to change the whole face of civilisation as the modern man
may lead the world to the satanic path and destroy his heaven on
earth.
As the test bombs went off booming in the Pacific, both the
Soviet Union and United States of America got perplexed. Bombs
are being stockpiled and both the big powers are trying to outwit
each other. It is a game of power to reign supreme. This lust for
supremacy cannot hold sway at all, as its consequential outcome is
perilous.
The Arms Race is in full swing and the paradox of
statements of both the superpowers have got a deluding effect on the
world community. They say one thing and do the other.
Atomic energy may bring a heaven on earth, but it all
depends upon its proper utilisation for the benefit of mankind.
Atomic energy may be used for beneficial purposes on the
fields, in the factories and elsewhere for productive purposes. A few
ounces of uranium may generate such a big quantum of electricity
that it may be sufficient to raise agricultural production and also the
industrial production in the developed and the developing nations,
which have yet to rebuild their economics.
The atomic energy may bring about Green Revolution, as its
peaceful use will feed the tube-wells, harness the river, help bring
about a revolution in the field of agro-industry and thus transform the
rural economy. The atomic energy is being used for building up
defence reserves in rich countries. In Japan its use is the maximum
and therefore she has become an ‘Industrial Heaven on Earth’. Her
exports are the maximum possible in the world and also the cheapest.
If Japan can use the nuclear energy in peaceful ways, why can’t other
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nations do so? It depends upon the non-aligned world to give a
serious thought to this prospect as the building up of their economics
is of paramount importance.
The UN Forum should be used to emphasise this point and
thus ask nations to halt their pace towards destruction and use the
atomic energy for constructive purposes. The world should not be
destroyed and the civilisation should prosper instead of getting
destroyed. In this age of democracy, the majority of nations
comprising non-aligned world may coerce superpowers to halt their
pace and destroy the stockpiled atomic devices and help the poor
nations to utilise to the maximum the modern inventions and thus
through active utilisation of the nuclear energy transform their
economics to eradicate poverty from earth, otherwise if this course is
not adopted, this Heaven shall turn into an inferno through the
insagacious course of action of the Superpowers and the men that
rule in those countries.

CITIZENSHIP – Its Rights and Responsibilities

Life in the modern world is so complex that we are not
conscious of the debt we owe to others. Without the help that others
give us we will not be able to live even for a single day. I sleep in a
house built by others. I eat the food cooked by others. I wear clothes
woven and stitched by others. Whatever I do, wherever I turn I find
that I owe a debt to others which I can never fully discharge. This is
inevitable when men live in groups. A community is a group of
individuals living together and helping each other to live.
A citizen means one who lives in a city. But nowadays the
world has come to have a much larger meaning. We say a citizen of
Pakistan although Pakistan is not a city. So citizen means members
of a community or a state. Just as a man owes a duty to his father and
mother so a citizen owes a duty to the state. For the State is more
than father and mother. But when one grows up one realises that one
owes service and sacrifice to one’s parents and elders. It is the same
with a citizen. When a citizen is young in citizenship he makes
demands on the State and expects everything to be done for him. If
we look around we shall see that this is the attitude of most of us
towards our state. We expect the State not only to give us shelter
band food but to give us money for setting ourselves up in business
or help of various other kinds.
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This is the attitude of the young and selfish. When we fully
realise what the State has done for us, its citizens, we will see that we
owe it a lot more than it owes us. A good citizen should all the time
keep thinking of what he owes to the State and not of what the State
owes to him. If he fulfils all his duties to the State he will find that
the State is automatically fulfilling his duties towards him. Take a
very minor example. We all love to get things without paying for
them. There seems a thrill in travelling in a railway carriage without
a ticket. So many students do it whenever they can. At the same time
we blame the government for not improving railway travelling. If we
cheat the Government of money we make the railways a little poorer.
A poor railway administration cannot provide comforts for his
travellers. So we see at once that if we do our duty to the State as its
citizen the State has no option but to do its duty by us.
I was once walking in a street on a cloudy day when
suddenly I was blinded by a ray of sunshine. The ray fell on a
windowpane and from there reflected itself on my face. I thought
there was a profound lesson in this incident. Why was the
windowpane giving out so much light when it was dark and cloudy
all around? Because it kept no light for itself but gave away all the
light it received. This should be the attitude of a Pakistani citizen
towards Pakistan. Let him give all that he can in faithful service to
his country and waste no thought of what his country is giving to
him. Rights are not inherent. A right is born only out of a duty
fulfilled. Let us emphasise duties and forget rights.
You and I can begin our responsibilities as a citizen here and
now. If we eat a banana and throw the banana skin on the road we
are bad citizens. For anyone might slip on the banana skin and break
his leg. If we clean our houses and throw the refuse in the street or in
front of our neighbour’s house we are spreading disease and filth and
endangering the lives of others. So we see that whatever we do reacts
on our fellow-citizens. We must think out carefully the consequences
of all our actions, great and small, and see how far our actions are
irresponsible. The man who cheats the railways administration, the
teacher who teaches carelessly and inefficiently, the man who
profiteers, the black-marketer, the selfish politician – all these are
doing great harm, each in his own way, to the country of which he is
a citizen.
And we must never forget, even for a moment, that there is a
larger citizenship than the citizenship of one’s country. Each one of
us is a citizen of the world, whether he is conscious of it or not. If we
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do not produce enough, our poverty reacts on other countries. We
have to buy so many things from other countries. The world is knit
together in unbreakable bonds. While we serve in our small sphere of
a town or a State let us not forget that we are citizens of the world
and owe it service. There also we have no rights but only
responsibilities. If we fulfil our responsibilities our rights will be
automatically guarded.

The Problem of the Educated Unemployed

In our country literacy has hardly spread to 30 percent of the
population. Yet we find the thousands of educated youths are
wandering about in search of jobs. To an outside observer it may
look strange that the country cannot provide jobs to its low
percentage of the educated. Educated unemployment, however, is a
part of the general unemployment in the country because of lack of
development.
Educated unemployment, however, has a special
significance because there is an impression that investment in
education by an individual should yield for him a return in terms of
paid job. An educated man in Pakistan naturally looks for a job
suited to the particular type of education he has received with the
result that there has been plenty of supply in regard to certain
occupations and profession and shortage in others, depending on the
development of education in the country. Most educated youths
show a special liking for a job in particular position. Such a liking
further complicates the problem. Our educated people look more for
office jobs than for manual work.
In addition to these specific causes, there are many general
causes also. There is rapid increase in population. Economic
development has not been able to keep pace with over-population.
During the last World War many young people joined the armed
forces. On release from active service, they joined the ranks of the
unemployed. Some civil departments were also closed and the
retrenchment left many educated people who started crowding the
employment exchanges.
The scene near the employment exchange is really pathetic.
Young, pale-paced, disappointed graduates and M. A’s with
diplomas in their hands can be seen heaving deep sighs. Gone are the
golden college days and gone is the beautiful world of books!
Registration with the employment exchange gives them consolation.
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The interview letter gives them hope. Rejection dashes their hopes to
the ground. “Man is ever a fighter – so one fight more.” Lo! The
second attempt is also a failure “No” after “No” and complete
disappointment! So much so that suicides are not uncommon. The
more daring elements fall into the clutches of political adventures
who do not hesitate to exploit the helplessness of these young
people. When they join a political party, it is out of political
conviction. This gives rise to unhealthy and destructive opposition.
To solve the problem of unemployment among the educated, a study
group was set up sometime back. The group submitted its report on
the basis of which the extent and gravity of the problems were made
known. According to the group the question of the educated
unemployed cannot be viewed purely in quantity, but it is necessary
to be more specific about the kind of education for which job
opportunities are required to be created. Except a few very highly
paid jobs, the educated unemployed have shown disinclination to
leave their zones. Instances are not wanting where surplus in certain
categories of educated and trained personnel is reported at some
employment exchanges while they trained personnel is reported at
some employment exchanges while these very categories are in short
supply at others. The supply and demand can be adjusted by
providing attractions to people in needy areas.
Some long time measures may also be adopted as ad hoc
measures alone cannot produce lasting results. Expansion of
education and training facilities should, therefore, be closely linked
to the future requirements of the economy.
Government may recruit all the educated unemployed as
‘cultural soldiers’ and engage them in mass literacy work. This shall
have double gain. On one side the employment problem of the
educated will be solved; on the other hand illiteracy will disappear
from the country. The teaching profession in Pakistan has not been
able to attract the best talent. Among the educated unemployed there
may be some talented ones. They may be helped to seek admission
into training institutes, and awarded scholarships and freeships.
Some of them may be sent for undergoing technical courses in fields
in which there is shortage.
To ease the situation the government may grant them an
unemployment allowance. Such an allowance may later on, when
they get a job, be recovered from them in easy instalments.
Maintenance loans may also be granted on the same basis. In a
democratic set up, the government must stand by the people when
 70
they are helpless and the people must help the government when it
needs help. Nationalised banks have been instructed to give loans to
engineers to set up small industries and to others to organise small
retail businesses.
Unemployment among the educated is increasing day by
day. This will drag our youths, now full of vigour, into listlessness. It
is a grave loss for a nation which needs more builders tomorrow. The
leaders in the country must do a bit of thinking and realise the
gravity of the situation. The educated unemployed are the most
potentially vital section of our society. They have a rich store of
energy which can be best utilised for nation-building activities.

Arms Control and Disarmament

Attempts through treaties, proclamations, convention, and
tacit agreement to limit the destructiveness of warfare by controlling
the acquisition and use of weapons and military technology.
Historically, war appears as an integral part of human affairs.
In three millennia of recorded history, less than 300 years have been
free of armed conflict; yet people have always recognized the folly,
waste, brutality, and inhumanity of warfare and have continually
attempted to limit its devastation and the spread of increasingly
destructive weapons.
One of the earliest formal attempts to limit the scope of war
was organized by the Amphictyonic League, a quasi-religious
alliance of most of the Greek tribes, formed before the 7th century
BC. League members were pledged to restrain their actions in war
against other members; thus, for example, they were barred from
cutting a besieged city’s water supply.
The league was empowered to impose sanctions on violating
members, including fines and punitive expeditions, and could require
its members to provide troops and funds for this purpose. Another
early example of an arms control and disarmament treaty was the
Rome-Carthage Treaty of Peace (202 BC), which ended the Second
Punic War; it required the destruction of all but ten warships, and
limited the possession of armaments in general. It also banned
Carthage’s training and possession of war-fighting elephants.
Because arms technology remained nearly static from the
3rd century BC to the Middle Ages, few attempts were made to
control the spread of new weapons. In feudal societies, such as those
of medieval Europe or Japan, laws and customs developed to keep
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weapons a monopoly of the military classes and to suppress arms
that might democratize warfare. These customs tended to disappear
as soon as some power saw a decisive advantage in the use of a new
weapon.
In medieval Europe the Roman Catholic Church attempted
to use its power as a supranational organization to limit both new
weapons and the intensity of warfare. The Peace of God, later the
Truce of God, instituted in 990, protected Church-owned property,
defenceless non-combatants, and the agrarian base of the economy
from the ravages of war. In 1139 the Second Lateran Council
prohibited the use of the crossbow against Christians, although not
against those the Church considered infidels.
Firearms widened the scope of war and increased the
potential for violence, culminating in the devastation of central
Europe in the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648). Widespread revulsion
against the horrors of that conflict led to attempts in many countries
to lessen the brutality of warfare by limiting combat to recognized
armed forces, by formulating conventions for the humane treatment
of prisoners and the wounded, and by organizing logistics to end
supply by pillage. These rules prevailed throughout the 18th century,
making war a relatively limited and civilized “game of kings”.
Many Utopian plans for the total abolition of war were also
formulated during this period by such men as French philosopher
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Charles Castel, Abbé de St Pierre.
Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, commented that all these plans
needed to succeed was the cooperation of all the kings of Europe.
The rise of mass armies during the American War of
Independence (1775-1783) and Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815) again
enlarged the size and devastation of war; yet throughout that period
no attempts were made to reduce or limit national arsenals other than
those imposed by the victors upon the defeated. The one exception
was the Rush-Bagot Treaty (1817), under which Great Britain and
the United States reduced, equalized, and eventually eliminated their
naval and other forces on the Great Lakes and the US-Canadian
border.
In the 19th century the manufacturing capabilities created by
the Industrial Revolution were applied to the production of war
materials. Technological innovation led to the development of rifled
artillery, breech-loading rifles, machine-guns, and other weapons
that revolutionized warfare. The resources of entire nations could
now be turned to war, making possible conflicts of unprecedented
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scale and destructiveness. Although many government leaders saw
the arms build-up in Europe as potentially disastrous, nothing was
done to reduce armaments until the First Hague Peace Conference of
1899.
The First Hague Conference was convened at the initiative
of Nicholas II of Russia to control arms development and improve
the conditions of warfare. Twenty-six nations attended the
conference, which codified the laws and customs of land warfare,
defined the status of belligerents, and drafted regulations on the
treatment of prisoners, the wounded, and neutrals. It also banned
aerial bombardment (by balloons), dumdum (expansion) bullets, and
the use of poison gas. Most important, it established a court, the
Permanent Court of Arbitration, for the arbitration of international
disputes (although this court had no enforcement powers).
The Second Hague Peace Conference of 1907 was marked
more by discord than discourse, a sign of the deteriorating world
situation. However, it furthered the cause of mediation and
arbitration of disputes by establishing additional courts to arbitrate
cases involving ships’ cargoes seized during war, and resolution of
international debts. A Third Hague Conference was scheduled for
1915. Ironically, World War I caused its abandonment.
After the carnage of World War I, the international climate
was more receptive to the idea of arms control. The Treaty of
Versailles, signed at the end of the war, virtually disarmed Germany.
During the years between World Wars I and II, many formal arms-
control conferences were held and many treaties were drawn up.
The Covenant of the League of Nations established criteria
for reducing world armaments. The League’s Council was to
establish reasonable limits on the military forces of each country and
submit them for consideration to the member governments. Members
of the League were also called upon to limit the private manufacture
of arms and munitions and to exchange information on the size and
status of their military establishments and arms industries. The
League’s lack of enforcement capability, however, made compliance
strictly voluntary.
From 1921 to 1922 the Washington Naval Conference was
held to establish stable relationships among the naval forces of the
various powers. Three treaties were enacted at the conference: the
Four-Power Treaty, the Five-Power Treaty, and the Nine-Power
Treaty. By the terms of the first, France, Great Britain, Japan, and the
United States agreed to respect the status quo in the fortification of
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Pacific possessions and promised consultation in the event of a
dispute. An associated agreement was signed with the Netherlands
regarding the Netherlands Indies (now Indonesia).
The second treaty focused on arms limitations. A 5-5-3-1.75-
1.75 ratio was established between US, British, Japanese, French,
and Italian battleships. That is, for every 5 US and British
battleships, Japan was allowed 3, and France and Italy were allowed
1.75. Maximum total tonnage was limited, as well as specification of
a maximum single-ship tonnage of 35,000 tons. A ten-year
moratorium on battleship building (except to fill out the treaty), and
a limit on size and armament were also included. The third treaty
was an attempt to accommodate the signatories’ interests in China.
In 1925 a convention in Geneva banned the use of toxic gas
in warfare. By the time World War II began in 1939, most of the
Great Powers, except Japan and the United States, were signatories.
(Japan signed it in 1970 and the United States in 1974.) This accord
has been observed by most of the signatories, although Italy used
poison gas in Ethiopia in 1936.
Other examples of countries using chemical warfare agents
have included Japan between 1937 and 1945 in the Sino-Japanese
War; Germany, to exterminate Jews in Europe between 1940 and
1945; Egypt, in Yemen between 1963 and 1967; the United States in
using defoliants and harassing agents in Indo-China from 1961 to
1970; and Iraq against the Kurds in 1994.
The 1925 convention was negotiated because of public
horror over the use of poison gases in World War I. The total gas
casualty figures for all the belligerents during that war was around
1.3 million, of which some 100,000 were fatal. The survivors
suffered severe health effects including damaged lungs and
blindness.
In 1928 the Kellogg-Briand Pact, initiated by France and the
United States, was signed by 63 nations. The pact renounced war as
an instrument of foreign policy. It made no provisions, however, for
enforcing compliance, and many nations only signed it with
sweeping qualifications. It had no effect on international affairs.
In 1930 a naval conference was held in London to amend the
Washington Conference treaties. Its most important effect was to
change the US-Japanese battleship ratio to 5-3.5. It also extended the
battleship moratorium through 1936.
In 1932, after nearly ten years of preliminary discussions, a
World Disarmament Conference was held in Geneva under the
 74
auspices of the League of Nations. The keystone of the conference
was the so-called Hoover Plan—proposals put forth by the United
States, based on the concept of qualitative disarmament—that is, the
progressive elimination of offensive weapons. The result was to have
been an increasingly unfavourable ratio between offensive and
defensive power. Qualifications imposed by many of the major
nations, however, diluted the Hoover Plan until little remained but a
statement of principles.
A final naval conference was held in London in 1936. There
the United States and Great Britain reaffirmed the naval limitation
treaties, with an acceleration clause (that is, one providing for
proportional increase in the US-to-British ratio) to counteract any
German or Japanese violations. The Japanese, increasingly
militaristic and fearful of American and British superiority, withdrew
from further negotiations. This was the last major arms-control
conference before World War II.
After World War II considerable support again developed
for arms control and for alternatives to military conflict in
international relations. The United Nations (UN) Charter was
designed to permit a supranational agency to enforce peace, avoiding
many of the weaknesses of the League of Nations covenant. Thus,
Article 11 of the charter stated that the General Assembly could
consider the general principle of disarmament and the regulation of
armaments. Article 26 required the Security Council to submit plans
for a system of armament regulation. Article 47 established a
military staff committee to assist the Security Council in this task.
The development of the fission bomb by the United States
towards the end of World War II brought with it the capability of
devastating whole civilizations. While the United States still
maintained a monopoly on nuclear weapons, it made overtures in the
UN for the control and elimination of nuclear energy for military
purposes. In June 1946, Bernard Baruch presented a plan to the UN
Atomic Energy Commission, calling for the abolition of nuclear
weapons, international control over the processing of nuclear
materials, full sharing of all scientific and technological information
concerning atomic energy, and safeguards to ensure that atomic
energy would be used only for civilian purposes. The Soviet
government vetoed the Baruch Plan in the Security Council,
objecting to the UN’s authority over disarmament and citing the
domination of that body by the United States and Western Europe.
 75
In 1949 the Soviet Union exploded an atomic weapon of its
own, ending the US monopoly. The possibility of a nuclear war was
now present, because relations between the Soviet Union and the
West were tense. During the Cold War, both the United States and
the Soviet Union were engaged in a race to develop thermonuclear
(hydrogen) devices, which have many times the destructive power of
fission bombs. These weapons, along with rapid development of
missile delivery systems, raised the possibility of destroying
civilization in the Northern hemisphere in all-out war. After 1954,
when the Soviet Union exploded its first H-bomb, the primary
concern of arms control was to reduce nuclear arsenals and prevent
the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology.
In 1957 the International Atomic Energy Agency was
established to oversee the development and spread of nuclear
technology and materials, and to safeguard peaceful nuclear
technology so as to prevent the diversion of nuclear materials to
military applications. Two years later a treaty was negotiated to
demilitarise the Antarctic and to prohibit the detonation or storage of
nuclear weapons there. Both the United States and the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) were among the signatories.
In 1961 the UN General Assembly passed the Joint
Statement of Agreed Principles for Disarmament Negotiations. It
was followed in 1963 by the (Limited) Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty,
which bound the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union not to
test nuclear weapons in space, in the atmosphere, or underwater.
In 1967 the Outer Space Treaty between the same nations
banned the placing in space of nuclear and other weapons of mass
destruction. The deployment of nuclear weapons in orbit was
expressly prohibited. A second treaty in 1967, the Treaty of
Tlatelolco, banned nuclear weapons from Latin America. The 1971
Sea-Bed Treaty banned the placement on the sea bed and the ocean
floor of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.
One of the most important treaties of this period was the
1972 US-Soviet Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile
Systems. It permitted anti-ballistic missile ABM) deployments
around two areas in the United States and the USSR: one for the
defence of each national capital (Washington, D.C. and Moscow)
and the other for the defence of an intercontinental ballistic missile
(ICBM) site. The deployment of ABMs for the defence of the whole
territory of the United States and the USSR was banned.
 76
One of the most important agreements to date on arms
control is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968. This
treaty bans non-nuclear-weapon states from acquiring nuclear
weapons and nuclear-weapon states from assisting or encouraging
non-nuclear-weapon states to acquire nuclear weapons. Under the
NPT the non-nuclear-weapon states are entitled to receive assistance
in developing nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
In 1993 North Korea threatened to withdraw from the treaty
after refusing to let inspectors examine its sites of stored radioactive
waste. The International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) wanted to
take samples of the waste to analyse it and estimate the amount of
plutonium North Korea had separated from spent reactor fuel
elements. As of early 1997, North Korea has not withdrawn from the
treaty. France and China have now acceded to it. Israel, India, and
Pakistan are nuclear-weapon states not in the treaty. India officially
joined the list of nuclear powers when it conducted five underground
nuclear tests in May 1998, with Pakistan following suit days later
with six underground tests. These tests raised fears of a nuclear arms
race, or even a conflict, on the subcontinent.
In May 1995 in New York, the Non-Proliferation Treaty
Extension Conference extended the treaty indefinitely. The
conference also agreed a set of Principles and Objectives for Nuclear
Non-Proliferation and Disarmament to serve as a guide for future
disarmament negotiations, and agreed to strengthen the treaty’s
review process committing the parties, particularly the nuclear-
weapon parties, to a greater degree of accountability concerning their
fulfilment of their obligations under the treaty. The 1985 South
Pacific Nuclear Weapon Free Zone Treaty (Treaty of Rarotonga)
prohibits the parties from acquiring nuclear weapons and aims to
prevent the stationing and testing of nuclear weapons in the zone.
In the late 1960s, negotiations known as the Strategic Arms
Limitation Talks, or SALT, were initiated between the USSR and the
United States on the regulation of their strategic (long-range)
weapons arsenals. The SALT I negotiations resulted in a series of
agreements in May 1972 limiting the size and composition of the two
nations’ nuclear weaponry. That same year a treaty was signed
barring nuclear weapons from the sea floor, and an agreement (the
Executive Agreement Covering Certain Offensive Systems) was
ratified that placed limits on the sizes and numbers of specific
weapons systems. SALT II talks were held from 1972 to 1979, but
 77
the resulting treaty was not ratified by the US Senate because US-
Soviet relations were deteriorating.
During the early 1980s, controversy surrounded the
placement by the United States of ballistic missiles on the territory of
some of its Western European allies. Opposition to this within West
Germany (which became part of the united Federal Republic of
Germany in 1990) played a part in unseating Chancellor Helmut
Schmidt in 1982. In 1983, US and British anti-nuclear groups, such
as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, rallied to support a
bilateral arms freeze, and in the United States, Roman Catholic
bishops approved a pastoral letter with a similar aim.
US-Soviet arms negotiations resumed in 1985. At a summit
meeting in Washington in December 1987, President Reagan and the
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed a treaty banning
intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF), including many of those the
United States had placed in Western Europe several years earlier
such as cruise and Pershing missiles. The treaty called for the
destruction of all US and Soviet missiles with ranges of about 500 to
5,500 km (300 to 3,400 mi) and established a 13-year verification
programme. The INF treaty was ratified by the US Senate and the
Soviet Presidium in May 1988.
Non-Nuclear Weapons Agreements In addition to nuclear
weapons, technology enables the production of chemical and
bacteriological weapons capable of mass destruction, as well as more
lethal conventional weapons.
In 1977 a resolution of the Diplomatic Conference on the
Reaffirmation and Development of Humanitarian Law Applicable to
Armed Conflict banned the use against civilians of certain area-effect
conventional weapons, such as booby traps, landmines, and napalm.
Because these weapons do not, by definition, discriminate between
combatants and non-combatants, any action short of complete
prohibition is meaningless.
Chemical and Biological Weapons Agreements to limit
weapons for chemical and biological weapons have also been
enacted (the first, the Geneva Convention, in 1925). In 1972 the
Biological Convention was signed by the United States, the USSR,
and most other nations to prohibit the development, production, and
stockpiling of biological and toxic weapons. This convention,
however, allows research for defensive reasons, which gives
information about biological agents for offensive purposes.
 78
Despite the treaties, however, both the United States and the
USSR were accused of continuing research and development in this
area, and at least eight other nations were suspected of developing
such weapons. Prompted by the use in 1987 and 1988 of poison gas
by Iraq in its war against Iran, and by US allegations of the building
of a chemical weapons plant in Libya in 1988, representatives of
more than 140 nations met in Paris in January 1989. They reaffirmed
the previous conventions and called for a treaty that would ban all
such weapons. The office of the Secretary-General of the UN was
empowered to investigate suspected chemical weapons use.
The Environmental Modification Convention, signed in
1977, prohibits military or other hostile use of genetic engineering or
environmental modification techniques, although it does not ban
genetic engineering as such. The convention is regarded by some as
essentially meaningless in that the environmental modifications
envisaged—generating tidal waves, hurricanes, and so on—are not
technically feasible and may not be in the foreseeable future.
However, as advances are made in these fields, the importance of
such agreements will increase.
The Chemical Weapons Convention treaty of 1993 banned
manufacture of chemical weapons and restricts trade in substances
used to make them. It will come into force when it has been ratified
by 65 states; this process will take several years.
The 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe,
also known as the CFE Treaty, sets ceilings on battle tanks,
armoured combat vehicles, artillery pieces, combat aircraft, and
attack helicopters in an area stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the
Ural Mountains.
As the 1990s began, the United States and the USSR
continued to negotiate arms-control accords. In May 1990, President
Gorbachev and the US president George Bush approved a treaty to
end production and reduce stockpiles of chemical weapons, and in
July 1991 the two leaders signed the START I agreement requiring
both nations to reduce their strategic nuclear arsenals by about 25 per
cent. Both sides also moved to reduce conventional weapons and to
continue phased withdrawal of their forces from Europe.
The collapse and break-up of the Soviet Union in late 1991
raised complex new problems, as strategic nuclear weapons were
located at sites in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. The
establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States, with a
single unified command over such weapons, calmed immediate
 79
fears. There was, and still is, concern that the Soviet break-up might
hasten the spread of sophisticated weapons to the Middle East, the
Indian subcontinent, and other world trouble spots. The START II
Treaty, signed by George Bush and Russian president Boris Yeltsin
in January 1993, limits submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and
calls for the elimination of almost three quarters of the nuclear
warheads and all the multiple-warhead land-based held by the United
States and the former Soviet republics.
By the year 2003 the strategic warheads of each power are to
be reduced to around 3,000. While START I came into force in
December 1994, START II has yet to be ratified by the United States
and Russia; in particular, the Duma is very reluctant to ratify it in its
present form. There are also current moves to effect a ban on
battlefield laser weapons: the October 1995 Review Conference for
the 1977 Protocol, relating to the protection of victims of
international armed conflict, banned laser weapons specifically
designed to cause permanent blindness.
In 1976 underground testing was limited to weapons of no
more than 150 kilotons yield. Planned negotiations towards a
comprehensive test ban were cancelled by President Reagan in 1981.
A Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which is expected to put an end
to all nuclear testing, was signed by President Clinton and approved
by the United Nations General Assembly in September 1996.
However, the treaty requires that all nuclear nations should ratify it
before it comes into force; to date, India and Israel have declined to
do so.
On July 8, 1996, the World Court declared that the use of,
and the threat of the use of, nuclear weapons, was illegal. The Court
was, however, unable to make a decision regarding situations where
the survival of the state was threatened.

Nuclear Arms Race in Asia!

Asia may be on the verge of a new arm race involving
nuclear weapons and missiles. Two broad interacting trends are
likely to propel the great powers of Asia into a nuclear dynamism
that could have significant consequences for the Pakistan policy.
One is the ongoing modernisation of China’s atomic arsenal,
sharply brought into focus by Beijing’s nuclear blast and its test of
an advanced international missile in 1995. The other relates to the
plans of the United States, Russia and Japan to develop and deploy
 80
missile defence – also called the “Sons of the Star War”. These two
trends could feed into each other and engulf Asia in an
unprecedented arms race involving the introduction of additional
nuclear weapons and defensive systems against nuclear-tipped
missiles.
The American planes to press ahead with the development
and deployment of theatre missiles defences, a scaled down version
of the former U. S. President, Mr. Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars
proposals in the early 1980’s, could have a strong effect on the
current Chinese nuclear doctrine and may force Beijing to accelerate
its nuclear modernisation. A rapid Chinese nuclear modernisation, in
the context of growing apprehensions about Beijing’s political
objectives, could in turn, reinforce the missile defence efforts of
Tokyo. Washington and Moscow, pushing Asia into classic arms
race.
For about three decades, China had relied on a small nuclear
force – with about 300 nuclear warheads now deployed – for
deterring its potential adversaries. So long as the U. S. – Russian
rivalry remained the central element of the international system,
China was content with this ‘minimum deterrent’ force, and had to
laxity of go slow with the introduction of new weapons into its
atomic arsenal.
But a relaxed Chinese nuclear posture, reflected in the
doctrine of minimum deterrence, could soon become history. China’s
strategists are said to be pushing for significant expansion of the size
as well as the range of its nuclear inventory. There are reports
suggesting China could move towards a doctrine called “Flexible
response” that calls for nuclear engagement with a potential
adversary at all levels and involves the development and deployment
of many weapons.
Feeding into the new nuclear strategy is the momentum
towards building missiles defences in the U.S. the real and perceived
fears about the spread of ballistic missiles, around the world have
helped create a strong bipartisan support for the “Sons of Stars
Wars” in Washington. The Clinton administration is pressing ahead
with plans for the deployment of theatre missile defences aimed at
protecting its forward deployed forces in and around the Euro-Asian
landmass.
Declaring their interest in the joint development of Star War
technologies and weapons systems at the recent Moscow Summit,
the U. S. President, Mr. Bill Clinton and the Russian President, Mr.
 81
Boris Yeltsin, said in a joint statement on May 10, 1995, that they
“will make every effort towards the goal of broadening bilateral
cooperation in the area of defence against ballistic missiles.”
In committing themselves to cooperation on missiles
defence, Washington and Moscow may have begun to rewrite the
rules of the global nuclear game. For about four decades, peace
between the Cold War rivals was kept by the balance of nuclear
terror, under which both the U.S. and Russia had the ability to
destroy each other after absorbing a nuclear strike, but neither side
had the capability to defend against a nuclear attack. It was this
mutual vulnerability that kept the nuclear adversaries in check.
In developing a new set of principles for strategic stability in
the post-Cold War world, Washington and Moscow have now agreed
to introduce missile defence into the nuclear equation. Although
there are justifying the drift towards Star Wars in the name of missile
proliferation for the developing world, China fears that in a world of
missile defences, its primitive nuclear deterrent may increasingly get
obsolete and irrelevant.
Chinese officials have repeatedly warned against the
introduction of U.S. missiles defences into Asia: “If a country with
nuclear weapons has a spear and then gets a shield, you can imagine
what would happen”, the Chinese say with reference to the potential
for a first strike without the fear of retaliation.
Besides the worries about the new posture being adopted by
the nuclear superpowers. China is also concerned about U.S. and
Japanese plans to jointly develop and deploy missile defences in
Asia. There is a growing sentiment in Japan favour of building
theatre missile defences, and many in Tokyo argue that U.S.
Japanese cooperation in building missile defences will be the litmus
test of continuing American security commitment to Japan.
The Japanese defence establishment may have come to see
missiles defences as a substitute for an independent Japanese nuclear
deterrent. With the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty now extended
indefinitely, Tokyo may believe it badly needs to offset the
permanent nuclear asymmetry between Beijing and Tokyo that is
codified by the membership of Japan as a non-nuclear state in the
NPT.
Although Tokyo justifies the need for theatre missile
defences on the ground that North Korea is acquiring medium range
missiles that could be targeted on Japan, it is not unaware that an
advanced missiles defence capability could provide it with a means
 82
to balance the Chinese nuclear capabilities. Tokyo’s outrange at the
recent Chinese nuclear test and its rare assertiveness in quickly
announcing an aid cut off against Beijing suggests a growing anger
in Japan about the expanding Chinese nuclear and military
capabilities.
China has been steadily moving towards improving the
accuracy of its missiles, considering the relevance of tactical nuclear
weapons, and the introduction of multiple warheads on its missiles.
Without a rapid modernisation of its nuclear deterrent and a
significant expansion of its nuclear arsenal, Beijing fears that the
credibility of its nuclear deterrent may come under challenge and
that it may be subjected to strategic ‘blackmail’ by its potential
adversaries, the U. S. in particular.
The upshot of all this is that a complex nuclear and missile
race may be about to begin in Asia, involving all the great powers of
Asia – China, Russia and Japan – and the great powers of Asia –
China, Russia and Japan – and the United States, further
destabilising the already uncertain strategic environment in Asia. At
stake for Washington and Beijing may be nothing less than the future
primacy in Asia. Russia needs to remain a power of consequence in
Asia and to expand its weight in the emerging Asian balance of
power. Nuclear weapons and a whole range of new technologies
being developed – including those that can mars programme – could
become critical in the new struggle for dominance over a prosperous
Asia.

Policing a Turbulent Democracy is no Joke!

Pakistan’s administrative system is now beset by increasing
pulls and pressure exerted by different groups in society, which have
experienced an enormous scope for advancing individual or sectional
interests under the cloak of democracy. The immense power and
patronage attached to the elective offices in government have made
politicians increasingly aggressive in their dealings with each other;
specially for winning electoral battles. Violent clashes between
opposing groups are on the increase in several States. Large sections
of the community which seek their identity as a group on the basis of
religion, language or caste are frequently involved in such clashes.
Police are invariably drawn into such situations as a matter
of their duty, and their action thereafter includes such coercive steps
like forcible dispersal of rioting mobs, arrest, remand to custody,
 83
prosecution and so on. Whenever the clashing groups happen to be
politically opposed to each other, the group against whom police
action is directed starts alleging partisan attitudes. Police
performances in such situation appears partial and one sided – in
some cases it also happens to be so in fact – at the behest of the
ruling political group or its supporters. The affected persons can only
seek relief in court, but by then the damage already done to them by
coercive police measures cannot be undone.
Pressure on the police takes a variety of forms. It is easy to
subject them to administrative action by way of transfer or
suspension on the basis of an alleged complaint taken up for inquiry.
While suspension acts as a great humiliating factor. A transfer act as
a severe economic blow and disrupts the police officer’s family life.
Aggressive interference with the police system by
extraneous sources, with tacit support from the ruling politicians,
encourages policemen to believe that their career advancement does
not depend on merit but can be secured by carrying favour with
politicians who count. This leads to the neglect of professional
performance to the satisfaction of the general public, and sets the
system on the downward slope.
A police force which first succumbs to pressure and becomes
the handmaid of the ruling party soon starts indulging in excesses on
its own, even without any political direction because of a general
feeling of assurance of protection from its political master in
recognition of its ‘loyalty’. Police brutality tends to go unchecked
when its political master has a true majority.
The Commission had studied this problem in great depth and
recommended the setting up of a statutory body called the State
Security Commission under the Chairmanship of the Chief Minister
or Home Minister as the case may be to exercise superintendence
and control over police. It will have seven members, namely, the
Chief Minister or Home Minister, a Chairman, two MNAs, one each
from the ruling and the Opposition party as Members and four other
members nominated by the Government from academicians, retired
members of judiciary or senior administrators who, in the public
estimate, are not involved in political activities. There should be at
least one woman.
The following charter is suggested for the State Security
Commission: (i) Lay down broad policy guidelines and directions for
the performance of preventive tasks and service-oriented functions
by police. (For example, police handling of labour, students and
 84
victims of social exploitation may be covered by such guidelines).
(ii) Evaluate police performance according to suitably evolved norms
from the police point of view and present a report to the Legislature
every year. (iii) Examine or direct the DGP to examine the record of
police action in any specific case where a complaint has been made
about alleged partisan or biased action either by or at the behest of a
police officer of or above the rank of Superintendent of Police. If
such examination discloses police misconduct, direct the DGP, to
take immediate corrective action. (iv) Function as a forum of appeal
to deal with representations from police officers of the rank of
Deputy Superintendent or above about their having been allegedly
victimised in service matters on account of prejudice arising from
political or other extraneous considerations. (v) Obtain periodic
reports from the District Security Councils, which may be set up for
tonning up the general quality of police performance in the districts
and, in particular, the quality of disposal of public complains against
police. (vi) Generally keep on reviewing the functioning of police in
the State.
The Commission shall also present to the Legislature an
annual report on the working of the Commission and the District
Councils, highlighting noteworthy instances of corrective actions
taken at the instance of the Commission or the Councils.
The State Security Commission shall meet at least once in
two months. Additional meetings may be held as and when required
to deal with matters that may be brought up by any member or the
DGP who will function as its Secretary. Though its deliberations
may not be open to the public or the press, a brief note should be
compiled about the matters discussed and decisions taken and got
approved for issue to the press.
The primary advantage in having the State Security
Commission is that the Government’s directions to the police will be
open and guided by frank discussions in the Commission. The
presence of a retired judge in the Commission will ensure judicial
objectivity and fairness in the evolution of views and policies on
police matters. The fact that every action taken or omitted to be taken
by the police is likely to be questioned by the Commission whose
members will also have access to all the records and other material
with the police and act as an effective check against illegal,
improper, arbitrary or high-handed action. Public interest will be best
served by this arrangement.
 85
The public image and personality of the police chief are
important. The process of selection and appointment to this post
must carry credibility, and should not be fouled by political whims or
prejudice. The NPC has recommended a fixed tenure of office for the
incumbent after his appointment by a special process which will
involve the State Security Commission also. The presence of an
opposition MLA in the Commission will make for a broad consensus
which will enhance the prestige of the appointee.
We also require a body closer to the people at the district
level to ensure prompt and proper disposal of public grievances
against police. A district Security Council may be set up for the
purpose in each district, with the District Collector as Chairman, the
Superintendent of Police as Member/Secretary and two MLAs, one
each from the ruling and the opposition party resident in the district
as members and three members from retired judges or senior
administrators or academicians or social workers, residents in the
district.
The function of the District Security Council shall be: (i)
Reviewing the action taken on complaints against policemen in the
district at periodic intervals and ensure their prompt and proper
disposal. Present a quarterly report to the State Security Commission.
(ii) Evaluate the performance of the district police according to the
norms laid down by the State Security Commission and present an
annual report to it. (iii) Generally keep in review the functioning of
police in the district.
The District Security Council shall have jurisdiction to
interfere in matters of internal administration or discipline of the
police force which shall remain under the normal chain of command
within police.
Maintenance of public order in a fear-free atmosphere is
vital for a truly functioning democracy. It cannot be just a debating
subject for our legislators, the ruling party claiming that all is well
and the Opposition parties alleging a total breakdown of order. The
common people are caught in between by the ground realities of
organised violence and growing militancy all round.
A highly motivated and professionalised police, commanded
by officers of competence and integrity, untrammelled by political
interference, is required immediately to restore order in public life. A
fundamental reform for this purpose is the depoliticisation of the
police department by putting it statutorily under a State Security
Commission as recommended by the NPC. Once this is done, the
 86
other administrative and functional changes can be smoothly made
by the Commission itself as it proceeds with its charter. All political
parties should unanimously bring about this basic and urgently
needed policy reform.

How Does Money Power Wreck Elections In

Pakistan?
It is appropriate for the legislature or the Election
Commission to prescribe the requirements of maintaining true and
correct accounts by political parties and the receipts as well. Unless
this is done, the purity of elections being spoiled by money power
cannot really be ruled out. The political parties must disclose how
much money was collected by them and from whom and the manner
in which it was spent so that the court is in a position to determine
whose money was actually spent through the hands of the party.
We should not sight of the serious fissures developed and the
perceptible after 1967. There is no gainsaying that our system of
elections is afflicted with serious ills which could be broadly
classified as four ‘Ms’ money, muscle, ministerial and media
powers.
A rough estimate is that black money of the order of Rs.
1,50,000 crores is floating in the country today. The emphasis has
now shifted from raising adequate funds from local industries and
others to international transactions and there is, therefore, no wonder
that we hear allegations such as Bofors, Enron. And further Hawala
misdeeds. The predicament of contestants who want to win election
by hook or by crook is quite understandable when there is an all-
round deterioration of values.
The election expenses ceilings have been raised to Rs. 4.5
lacks for an assembly constituency. Still these ceilings fall very short
of the reality. The total electorate for a parliamentary constituency,
on an average, works out to one million in our country as against
60,000 in England and 50,000 in Scotland. Further, we have to
reckon with all sorts of geographical shape of the constituencies.
In the U.K. for a country constituency, £ 4,330 plus 3.7
pence for elector have been fixed as the ceiling. There, the Secretary
of State, by order, may vary the maximum amount of election
expenses of candidates on the basis of the change in value of money
or on other justifiable grounds. No doubt the revision is placed
before Parliament for approval. In our country, before every general
 87
election to the National Assembly, a review of the ceilings may be
undertaken by the Election Commission.
Countries, such as Australia, Canada and Japan follow under
their law fixed ceilings. A rough break up of the legitimate expenses
on major heeds for a parliamentary constituency in our country is as
follows: Transport and fuel – Rs. 1.5 lacks; Paid workers employed
as polling agents including adequate posters, banners and voter’s
slips – Rs. 3.5 lakhs Stationery – Rs. 50,000 and Miscellaneous Rs.
20,000 a total of around Rs. 10 lakhs.
Originally, we borrowed the wholesome provisions of law in
this respect from the U.K. providing for elaborate legal steps laid
down for the maintenance of a true and correct election expenses
account. Unfortunately, there were two legislative onslaughts, one in
1956 amendments, according to many, the “disturbed conscience” of
some successful contestants in the first elections was mainly
responsible. There is no denying the fact that an overwhelming
majority of legislators embark upon their parliamentary career with a
gross lie; a false election expenses account. The 1956 amendments
were mainly to the effect that (1) the period of accounting was
narrowed down to one month between the election notification and
the declaration of result against the previously laid down unrestricted
period; (2) the elaborate Form 26 in which accounts were to be
furnished was dispensed with; (3) the declaration by a candidate and
his election agent on a solemn oath or affirmation to accompany the
account was dispensed with.
The 1974 amendments to section 77 completely made the
provisions thereof nugatory. Any expenditure incurred by the
candidates political party or any of their friends or other
organisations need not be accounted for by the candidates. However,
according to the verdict of the apex court, a candidate is not allowed
to place his funds in the possession of his political party, trade union
or other, etc.
It would be highly desirable to completely delete the two
amendments of 1956 and 1974 and restore the law as it stood prior to
1956.
Unfortunately, in regard to section 293A of the Companies
Act, 1956, we have taken steps that were sometimes forward and
sometimes backward depending on the political exigencies.
Previously, huge collections of money from companies by political
parties were used to be made by way of number of advertisements
from the same industry of the company in a single souvenir
 88
published by a political party. Now the requirements are that
contributions could be obtained only from non-government
companies to the maximum of five per cent in a financial year of its
average net profit determined during the three immediate preceding
years and that a resolution to this effect should be passed in the
Directors’ meeting. A committee favoured the imposition of
complete ban on any contribution for the reason that companies
formed by a large number of shareholders holding different political
views should be allowed to contribute. Further, the five percent
contribution now fixed is not a satisfactory arrangement for the
reason that a large amount in the case of major flourishing
companies, say sometimes exceeding even a crore of rupees, could
be collected. Therefore, specific graded figures should be fixed and
not any percentage.
The provisions of section 13A of the Income Tax Act, 1961,
which lay down requirements for the maintenance of accounts to
enable the assessors to deduce the political parties’ income (which
are allowed exemption from the tax) remain as dead letter. There is
absolutely a case for lifting the veil of secrecy and initiation of
criminal proceedings against of defaulting parties.
Electronic voting machines (EVMs) and mobile/stationary
polling station could be set up to help eliminate large scale
impersonations and booth-capturing. The period of campaign could
be reduced to seven days from the present 21, thereby cutting down
on expenditure. The following items account for a large expenditure
and the savings could be made by using the EVMs (1) special type of
paper for printing ballot papers including transport charges to the
printing presses and back – Rs. 1.1 lacks; (2) printing huge quantities
of ballot papers, cutting them and numbering and then checking: Rs.
2.25 lacks; (3) Transport ballot papers to the polling stations – Rs.
10,000; (4) saving on reduction of polling personnel and transport
Rs. 2.2 lacks; (5) Saving on ballot boxes – Rs. 69,000; (6) Stationary,
etc. – Rs. 10,000; (7) saving on counting arrangements – Rs. 1,85
lacks; and (8) by reduction of the campaign period to 7 days – Rs. 5
lacks.
If one family of three pays one rupee a year the total annual
collection would be more than what is needed on all aspects of
elections. The accounts should be maintained by political parties for
auditing.
In the U.S. there is a procedure enabling a tax payer to
indicate in his tax return (“check off”) that $ 1 could be set apart for
 89
election purposes on which no political party or Government has any
control. Similarly, we can adopt graded contributions on somewhat
similar lines.
The functioning of political parties should be regulated by
law, emphasising the compulsory maintenance of accounts audit by
independent auditors and submission of annual reports to the
Election Commission which, in turn, should forward them with its
comment to the National Assembly. There are other measures which
would also result in huge saving.
The problem of money’s role in elections, particularly for
the Union Parliament and State Assemblies, could be best solved by
fixing minimum educational qualification say postgraduate degree or
Doctorate degree for standing for higher legislative Membership of
Parliament.

Internal Security – Challenges and Approach

The threat to internal security is often posed by highly
trained and motivated volunteers belonging to highly organised and
resourceful terrorist outfits. The unenviable task of providing
protection to men, place and structures from these committed zealots
with the choice of time, place target in their favour and any number
of sophisticated methods and techniques of strike to choose from,
continually sap the manpower, machinery and other resources of the
police. Even in advanced countries the police find it difficult to cope
with the problem. The police should have led in modernisation
techniques with the antipode marching to keep pace. Unfortunately,
it is not so in the Pakistani situation.
The reaction of the police to terrorist threats is desperate
mobbing and covering the target at best and difficult immobilisation
has put it at a costly disadvantage. Their failure to draw up detailed
long term plans to meet terrorist challenges handicaps them in their
operations. Internal security cannot be guaranteed without a sound
knowledge of the terrorists’ way of functioning.
An internal security machine working in a void often give
rise to ludicrous security reactions. Anonymous calls or letters in
most unlikely situations are attended to with a desperate mobilisation
of men and machinery without scrutinising the call or the letter, and
everything ends up as a hoax. It is wrong to be ready to meet threats
but, the show of strength. Desperate reaction may prompt
mischievous elements to shoot similar missions almost daily. It is
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subtle planning and lowkey operation that make security possible.
All security arrangements must be preceded by thorough research
and detailed plans. This is completely forgotten in Pakistani
situation.
Not many are involved in an expertly drawn up operational
plan of sabotage. It is quality that counts and not quantity in both
sabotage and security operations. Those who really execute the
sabotage are highly motivated trained competent individuals. The
larger the number, the smaller the chances of success because of
human nature, coordination problems and higher chances of
leakages. Also it involves the problem of providing security and
escape routes for more men in the post-operational period. No
number of policemen can stop a highly motivated and trained man
from sneaking up to his target and destroying it. What is required is
not companies of policemen, but a handful of highly qualified drawn
up security plan, based on reliable intelligence inputs about the
objects and operational plans of the adversary. Everything except
these salient feature is present in the response of the Pakistani police
security challenges.
Pakistani security plans ignore the cardinal principle of a
good reticulation, namely, providing security without coming in the
way of the normal life of the target except where unavoidable. The
essence of security build up is protection with minimum
inconvenience to the concerned. But Pakistani security sleuths feel
otherwise. They believe in taking charge of the target, be it a place,
an installation, or a person and dictating terms as though the security
is given in exchange for freedom of movement and action. And all
this for inadequate security. But even national leaders have traded
their image and popularity for this supposed safety.
It is argued that the Pakistani security system is effective in
discouraging the less resourceful terrorist outfits from attempting
strikes and preventing half-hearted attacks. The argument is not
convincing for the simple reason that all terrorists outfits worth the
name are extremely resourceful with objectives, plans and strategies
and a complete commitment to carry out their operational plans. No
target is out of their reach. If a target is not struck for a long time, the
reasons can be only three, (a) the outfit has not really intended to
strike, (b) the outfit is yet to equip itself or (c) that security sleuths
could be exclusively covering the target making a strike impossible.
The problems of security are manifold. First is intelligence
collection. Often, true and false informations are so much entwined
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that it is impossible to distinguish one from the other. Even if a piece
of information is identified as true, it losses its value standing in the
midst of useless material. That isolated piece of information is
removed from the adversary’s action plan and when pursued leads to
wrong conclusions and dangerous situations. Continued research is a
must to utilise the information in action. This again depends upon the
skill and experience of the individual who handle the job. Often, both
the research and analysis are carried out under pressure of time
because of the proximity of the threat. Both intelligence and its
source must be kept as a closely guarded secret. Any leak may
prompt an adversary to modify his plan which will annul the security
operation. This creates problems of mobilisation and deployment
without rousing suspicion. The men to handle the security operation
should be handpicked for competence and probity. Their antecedents
and recent activities must be closely examined before they are
cleared.
The briefing of security operation about the job itself poses a
problem. The time of briefing the impending operation and the
briefing gives sufficient time to the operators for preparation, it must
not be too long. The timing of briefing and development must be
decided at high level to ensure perfect secrecy and, how much can be
told? Security operation basically involves the creative initiative of
the operator. His success depends upon the ability to assess the
situation and pursue a better course of action without loss of time.
Success also depends on how much briefing must be made to
operators at ranks and levels and how much information and
background knowledge can be fed to them. Here again, liberal
outlets for vital information create security risks. The primary
requirement of any security operation is a thorough study and
analysis of intelligence and other inputs, a comprehensive plan of
operation with flexibility to meet contingencies.
Timing is an essential ingredient of security planning and
decides the success or failure of any operation. It ends the elements
of surprise.
Not that everything traditional is irrelevant today. For
instance, the strategy of quadruple deployment – static guards, armed
pickets, mobile patrols and striking forces for a static target.
Standing guards, personal security officer, inner cordon, outer
cordon and striking force are deployed for a human target while for a
mobile target a security officer, escort, piloting and striking force
will form the skeleton of the system. However, it should be born in
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mind that this strategy is no way replaces specific security strategies;
it only complements them.
Security, its challenges and counter strategies are ever-
growing phenomena. An effective strategy must foresee challenges
and arm itself in advance. The country faces from RAW and other
foreign terrorists organisations. The number of new security outfits
coming up in an indication of Pakistan’s concern but then the accent
is misplaced on quantity in the form of a new security outfit every
time a serious security breach shakes the country, rather than
improve the quality. Until the country learns the basic lessons of
modern security, tragic death sand destruction are bound to continue.

Communication is a Basic Necessity or Efficient

Management in every organisation and home
The process of transmitting and receiving ideas, information,
and messages. The rapid transmission of information over long
distances and ready access to information have become conspicuous
and important features of human society, especially in the past 150
years, and in the past two decades, increasingly so. Effective
communication is a very important process in every aspect of life.
Nearly seventy per cent of our active hours are spent in
communication: either verbally, listening, reading or writing.
Communication is thus the capacity of an individual or a group to
evolve a desired response. Too often in business, the mere act of
sending a memorandum or delivering a speech is considered to
constitute a communication. However, an effective communication is
only brought about if it evokes the desired response or stimulus.
If one looks at Pakistani organizations today, it would appear
that communication is given secondary importance, and most of the
management do not handle communication with the employees
particularly well.
Communication in management, covers two main groups in
activity. Firstly, there is the individual’s ability, to articulate based
on his personality, clear thinking and skill in expression. Secondly,
there is a whole system of organisational communication through
verbal, written, committee systems and so on. Both groups of
activities are vast but are vital and inter-related. An examination of
almost any problem in human relations will probably reveal
communication failure which is either organisational or personal, or
a mixture of both.
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For the last few years, marketing reports and newspapers
articles have whipped much excitement by predicting a day when
desktop and portable computers, telephones, facsimile machines,
cable television, CD ROM, audio receivers, and other devices in the
office and home would all be connected globally.
After this long drumroll, 1992 may well be remembered as
the year when all those communication technologies around the
world actually began merging – not just through prototypes and
technology trials, but in commercial systems. And a dark horse is
shaping up to be one of the leaders in the merging and provisions of
telephone, data, and multimedia services cable television.
For the long term, the widely touted personal communication
services got a big boost. In this vision of worldwide wireless
communications, individuals anywhere, indoors, or out, can make or
receive calls on a packet handset.
Meanwhile, in the more “traditional” business of long-haul
optical fibre systems, several advances were made. Revolutionary
system, architectures also appeared as erbium-doped optical fibre
amplifies moved out of the laboratory into production and
deployment.
Today’s business environment is changing. The average
work day is longer and people are more mobile than ever before as
business try to complete in a global market place. Work has become
an activity not a place. We commonly work on airplanes, in hotel
rooms or at home. And while we travel, we need to stay in touch
with people and exchange information. Out-sourcing is becoming
more common for many corporate services. Employees, customers
and outside vendors often form virtual corporations to complete
specific projects, independent of the location. Computing is also
becoming a collaborative process, more often than not, done by
groups rather than individuals.
These trends are not limited to business. Consumers are also
turning to technology as never before. They are looking for
convenience through remote recess to bank accounts, voice
messaging, mobile paging and home access to video shopping
service, as they struggle to regain personal time in their daily lives.
With the rapidly changing world economy, wireless-based
communication has become a necessity for people on the move. In
Pakistan there has been much talk about this partly because of
economic liberalisation and the recent opening up of the telecom
sector and partly because of the ripple effect from the success it has
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had in the West. While the need for looking into these technologies
in the West is prompted from the benefits it offers to subscribers
over existing forms of communication, many people in Pakistan
view it as a panacea to the problems with an inherently unreliable
infrastructure.
Moreover the popularity of the internet and online services
reflects our increasing desire to use networks for business, and other
purposes. The emergence of the information super highway is giving
birth to universal services to consumer markets. The foregoing only
indicates not only the developments in but also the importance of
communication in the changing business scenario. In any
organisation, an effective communication serves several purposes
and benefits it in many ways.
It acts as a basic foundation of management. Since
communication provides the key to facilitate the exchange of ideas,
information as well as meetings of minds, it can aptly be described as
the “ears and eyes” of the management.
Communication plays a vital role in planning. The making of
a plan requires facts and figures which can only be made available
through effective communication. In Pakistan, one of the principal
reasons for the failure of planning is the communication gap between
those who plan and the masses for whom they are supposed to plan.
The formal organisation structure hinges on an effective
communication system. Similarly, informal communication within
the organisation is responsible for holding together the members of a
primary social group.
Communication also plays a pivotal role in rational decision
making, organisational control, as well as building and maintenance
of employees morale.
Conflicts are not always dysfunctional. While functional
conflicts may result in striving for excellence, creativity, a sense of
identify and responsibility, the dysfunctional conflicts will not only
lower the effectiveness of an individual but also that of organisation.
Generally, a conflict will arise if the goal of an individual is
contrary to those of the organisation. People work for personal goals.
If you want them to work for organisational goals, then they must be
able to personalise these goals. This means that they must have an
opportunity to influence and determine these goals. Only then will
they have a stake in the organisational goals and be motivated to
work for them.
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Conflict is also likely to arise if members in a group perceive
their goals as conflicting. Often, intra or inter group conflict arise
from difficulties on how to share available resources. Power is
another factor contributing to the conflict. Force alienates. Money
brings a calculated response. However, it is only openness and a
participation in decision-making that can generate commitment to
organisational goals.
People generally attempt to manage conflict, once it exists, in
one of the following ways:
 By avoiding the issue.
 By approaching the problem and attempting to reach a
solution, or
 By diffusing the situation and sharing in problem solving.
 Inter-personal conflict is best confronted, not smoothed over,
denied, or run away from.
When we are annoyed with a colleague, it is often better to
express that annoyance appropriately. If suppressed, they will later
lead to a major breakdown.
 All of us have an ambivalent dealing towards authority.
We like it and yet we also do not like it. A good boss realises
that some of the negative feelings expressed towards himself
are not because of his personal shortcomings but because, of
the authority vested in him.
 In conflict situations, personal prejudices become rife
and complicate situations. A limited understanding on issues
unrelated to the conflict can improve the climate for broader
cooperation.
 One should try a solution that enables a win-win
situation and avoid one that forces one side to lose.
 Preventing conflict is also an approach mode. Prevention
means anticipating the potential causes of conflict and taking
quick action to turn them into positive forces for better
understanding and cooperation.
 An emphasis on collaboration and team building also
helps to change the potential courses of conflicts into
positive cooperation. Hence, the focus is on recognising each
other’s strengths and planning appropriate strategies to
achieve corporate goals and objectives.
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Communication is seldom perfect. The reason is that there
are many barriers to it. However, there are several ways of
minimising ineffectiveness of communication and improving its
effectiveness. Management should be aware of its own
shortcomings. No “Chain of Command” or “Line of communication”
will ever be completely successful in passing on information. When
there is likely to be a breakdown, either individual or organisational,
the management should try to select a communication appropriate to
the circumstances.

Impact of Television on the Youth

Television is a chatty medium. Those who appear on it
whether they are newsreaders or sports commentators, are always
directly to the viewers. Television cannot build upon fantasy because
programmes have to be interrupted at regular intervals to advertise
products; or to address the audience. It is a common misconception
that products are sold through advertisements on television; for it is
in fact the audiences that are packaged for products. The imperatives
for audience research, determining the extent of viewship and
making prime time allocation is geared towards getting sponsorship
from makers of one or the other product, and generation information
on the kind of products that should be advertised at different times
slots. The result is that television becomes chatty medium embedded
into the world of commodities, in which moral communities are
created and destroyed in ways that are unique to television.
About a year ago an event on a talk show on American
television led to a murder in real life. The programme was about
surprise confessions. In one episode, a couple had been told that
someone in their life was going to make a confession about either an
emotion or an event that they could not have imagined. While the
couple was shown waiting expectantly – a neighbour was brought on
the screen. The neighbour confessed that he had entertained a
passion that he had never been able to acknowledge to them. The
expectation was built that he had secretly nurtured an unrequited
love for the wife. Then came the surprise confession – it was not the
wife that he had fancied but the husband. This so socked the husband
that the next day he took a gun and shot the neighbour dead. Much of
the subsequent discussion in newspapers and among many people
was about the intensity of homophobia in American society. That
one man had been unable to bear the idea that he was the object of
another man’s desire was seen as evidence of a deep-rooted fear of
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gay sexual mores. But I wondered whether the anger of the husband
had also something to do with the “revelation” of the most intimate
emotions in the glaring lights of television cameras to unseen tele-
viewers. So I became interested in more talk shows telecasted in
America in the afternoon. The participants in these talk shows, not
only the principal protagonists but the studio audiences are women,
visibly of the working classes or unemployed, with a fair sprinkling
of black women and girls. The host or the hostess in contrast is
clearly white, middle class, female or male. Occasionally a
professional person such a physician or a social worker appears to
“advise” or admonish from a supposed position of neutrality.
I saw a talk show in New York called “Stop partying Girl:
You are Pregnant”. In this 45 minutes slot, each mini-episode was
constructed around a young girl (age range 15-19), who was
pregnant and was “brought” to the show by the concerned relative –
a sister of a female cousin, or a friend – so that she could be
persuaded to stop “partying”. In response to probing questions posed
by the middle class hostess, the girl was made to “confess”; how she
was smoking or keeping late hours or taking drugs. “Are you not
concerned that you are harming your baby?” asked the hostess with a
look of concern. The response of the girl was either that she did not
care, or that though she knew that she was doing wrong she could
not stop. The hostess also allowed members of the audience gathered
there to ask questions, as and when they raised their hands.
When one of the girls said that it was not easy for her to give
up taking drugs, one woman stood up and said “Was it equally
difficult for you to get pregnant?” Another girl, a 16 year-old, who
already had a baby when she was 14, was brought there by her
mother, who said that it was she who took care of the daughter’s
child. “Don’t you see how much pain you are causing your mother?
Do you want to bring a child in the world who is handicapped? And
do you want your mother to go caring for the babies you bring in the
world?” these were questions posed from the audience with the
hostess interrupting to amplify a question or clarify its intent. The
tone was throughout accusatory and this was amplified by the
occasional tear that the accompanying relative wiped from her eyes.
Once in a while someone would bring in the question of the father
but in general it was assumed that reproduction was a matter that
concerned only the women community who were gathered there to
bring an erring member back to the fold. Towards the end of the
show a paediatrician was introduced who lectured the girls on their
irresponsible behaviour. “You girls are ruining the future generation
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by your irresponsibility. Just because a girl becomes pregnant, it
does not mean that she known how to be a good mother ;
motherhood has to be learnt like everything in life.”
There was little compassion for the hapless girls who were
little more than children themselves in being caught in the spiral in
which they exposed themselves, of ill health, HIV infection and
repeated pregnancies; in which the only support came from their own
mother who were themselves in their thirties, and struggling with
survival. There was much display of emotion – grief, anger,
bitterness. And thus a moral community of woman was sought to be
created out of a television talk show from which men had been
virtually eliminated except as professional advisers through whom
while middle class society spoke about the irrationality and
irresponsibility of the blacks, and the under classes.
There were other such shows – a mother and her run away
daughter were brought together in a surprise reunion – both
screamed out their emotions, took vows never to be separated again
while the audience participated in this great emotional drama by
shedding tears and sighing. Intimate details of emotional trauma
were relieved in shows – women revealed how they had accidentally
discovered the infidelity of their husbands through a home made
video of his sexual exploit with a prostitute. Wives or girl friends
confronted the ‘other woman’ with the audience assembled there
reiterating that no one had the right to steal another woman’s man.
Man never appeared as having an agency in these shows – they were
simply stolen, or they disappeared.
One is tempted to think that these shows allowed voices
from inner cities to be represented on television. After all news
coverage on American television takes notice of inner cities only in
the context of disasters – violence, drug trade, HIV infection. But the
accusatory tones and the constant effort to separate the good women
from the bad ones, tends to show that inner city voices are allowed
representation only to be dominated by the cultural hegemony of the
middle class voice. For the middle class viewer, the life in inner
cities is presented confirm all his or her prejudices of irresponsible
teenagers becoming pregnant, sexual promiscuity and rampant
violence. In a way, the participate through the medium of television
in a middle class society that is otherwise closed to them. The
cultural modes of confession and catharsis open up the space for a
particular kind of television culture to emerge in American society
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which reinforces the cultural divide between inner cities and the rest
of society.
In reflecting upon the dangers that globalisation of media
poses to countries like Pakistan one would be much more concerned
with the importing of these cultural categories of confession and
accusation as means for creating a cultural hegemony of the middle
class more than anything that may come in the register of the
imaginary like films or soap operas.

Revolution round the World in Recent Centuries

One significant cause of Revolution always is that the
attitude of the rulers towards their American colonists was not
sympathetic, resulting in American War of Independence. It was this
attitude of French and Russian rulers which was responsible for
Russian and French Revolutions respectively.
Then another reason was that economic conditions of the
masses in all the countries, where revolutions took place, were very
miserable. Though the kings and the traders enjoyed a pleasure-
giving life and were enjoying in their palaces, the economic
conditions of the people on the whole were very poor and miserable.
They had practically nothing with them, though they worked from
dawn to dusk. Their own miserable conditions on the one hand and
comforts and pleasures of the rulers on the other, made them rise in
revolt against the then established order.
The people in many European countries had been suffering.
They had suffered both from church fathers as well as their ruler.
They had also paid heavily and got back nothing in return except
rebukes and punishments. The result was that now they desired a
change, which could be possible only through revolutions, as in
those days there were no methods bringing far-reaching changes by
peaceful negotiations at equal level.
In many European countries the rulers believed in the theory
of Divine Right of Kings, by which they believed that the king was
the representative of God on earth. The theory also believed that the
subjects had no right whatsoever, to challenge their supremacy and
authority. According to them, for their every act of omission and
commission they were responsible to God and not to the people.
According they developed a very great autocratic attitude, which
could be changed only by revolutionary and not peaceful methods.
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Then another reason was that there was lack of contact
between the kings and the people. The kings lived in their beautiful
palaces far away from the worries of their subjects. They had no
contact with the people over whom they ruled. They did not know
their problems of day to day life and also about their inconveniences.
These problems gradually became deep-rooted and since there were
no methods of knowing them, the result was that these erupted into
Revolution.
Still another reason was that the attitude of the nobility
towards the common masses was very harsh as well as
unsympathetic. The nobility surrounded the kings and kept them in
the dark. They got only such laws passed which suited their
convenience alone and not the convenience of the subjects. Not only
this, but they also flouted the laws as and when they liked. They also
cared least for the masses. Thus whereas the masses paid, the nobles
enjoyed. As the time passed this became intolerable for the masses,
who decided to exert themselves through revolution.
It was the time when many of the rulers indulged themselves
in wasteful wars. These wars were not fought for the welfare of the
people. On the other hand these costly wars were an eye-sore for the
masses, which could be brought to an end, only if these rulers were
dethroned and for that revolution was the only way out.
There was thus not a single cause responsible for these
revolutions. In varying degrees these causes were responsible in
almost all the countries, where Revolution took place. It however,
cannot be denied that the Revolutions brought about and introduced
many far reaching changes. These even changed fundamentally and
basically the social, economic and political set up of the countries.
England had remained under the Tudor despotism for quite
sometime. In so far as Elizabeth was concerned she tried to rule the
country with great care. She looked after the interests and welfare of
the people. But when Stuarts came on the throne, real struggle
started. Both James 1, Charles I and Charles II believed in the theory
of Divine Right of the Kings. They believed that the people had no
right whatsoever to question their authority. They were not prepared
to take the Parliament into confidence, much less to tolerate its
interference. Their hard attitude resulted in struggle for supremacy
between the King and Parliament. This struggle continued for about
85 years and ultimately came to an end in 1688, resulting in the
superiority of the Parliament over the King. This change by which
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King had to give up his rights to the Parliament, is known in history
as the Glorious Revolution.
There was not one single, but many causes responsible for
bringing about the Glorious Revolution of 1688. under Elizabeth,
policy of religious toleration and adjustment prevailed. Both the
Catholics and the Protestants were considerably adjusted. But James
II wanted to follow a religious policy which was to benefit the
Catholics and harm the Protestants. He repealed all laws which were
against the Catholics. He wanted to give all jobs in the state to them.
In this way he began to repeal already existing laws without taking
parliament into confidence. This attitude of the king was disliked
both by the Parliament as well as the people.
James II believed in the theory of Divine Right of Kings. By
this theory he believed that Parliament had no right to interfere in his
affairs. Thus he wanted to act and actually acted in an arbitrary
manner. He also passed many laws, which in the opinion of
Parliament were unconstitutional. In this way he came in conflict
with the Parliament which could win the sympathies of the people, as
against the king, who had annoyed the people.
James antagonised not only the educated, but also annoyed
the learned. He appointed his own Catholic supporters on all the high
jobs in the universities. He also forced them to give pro-Catholic
teachings to the students. This was intolerable for the educated
people, who did not like the idea of biasing the minds of students in
educational institutions. They wanted to purity the universities and
colleges of this evil practice.
Duke of Manmoth had rebelled against James II. But after
coming to the throne, the king started a reign of terror and the
supporters of the Duke were persecuted in large numbers. This made
the king very popular. The masses now wanted to end this ugly and
unhappy situation. This reign of terror made him unpopular not only
in England but in Scotland and Ireland as well.
James II also maintained an army which contained soldiers
and officers who had Catholic leanings. The army was posted in the
outskirts of London. It teased the people and the king levied extra
taxes to maintain this army. It was an unusual experience for the
people, who felt that the king was going to establish military rule in
the country and that too of a Catholic dominated army. It created
great resentment against the king.
The king followed a clear policy supporting the Catholics.
He gave them all high posts and in an arbitrary manner removed all
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bans put on them. He also followed an aggressive and repressive
policy against the Protestants. The result of all this was that
Protestants in England, Ireland and Scotland stood as a solid bloc
against the authority of the king.
In his attempt to give the Catholic church its rightful place,
in 1687 James issued his First Declaration of Indulgence. He also
invited Pope of Rome to England and restored his old position on
him. By the First Indulgence all were given religious freedom.
Catholics were thus made eligible to hold all high offices. Soon after
in April 1688, James II issued Second Declaration of Indulgence, by
which an order was issued that the people would be appointed to
high positions irrespective of their religious beliefs. Clergymen were
asked to repeat this announcement in the churches for two weeks.
When some of the Archbishops petitioned to the king that he should
not insist upon such an announcement they were charged with
malicious and seditious libels. They were arrested and brought
before the court for trial. Their arrest created great resentment
against the king and made him very unpopular among his people.
The Archbishops were however, declared non-guilty and released.
James II decided to act in collaboration with France which
was then a Catholic state. Its effects in the economic field for the
people were very dangerous. Due to the weak policy of the king,
economic interests of England were subordinate to those of France.
The people of England were forced to pay heavy taxes and duties
without the approval of the Parliament but their benefits went to the
people of France. Thus great economic burdens, heavy taxes and
illegal activities of the king, created great resentment among the
people.
But in spite of all these problems, the people of England
were tolerating the rule of James II. His both daughters, who were
likely to succeed him, had Protestant leanings. England was hoping
that after James II, in the country there will again be Protestantism.
But at his old age the people of England were given the news of a
birth of a son to James’s wife Queen Mary of Modena. The people
were quite confident that the young child would be trained and
brought up as a Catholic monarch and that the nation will have to
suffer even after the death of James II. This was intolerable for the
people who decided to take a revolutionary step and decide the issue
once for all.
Such were the important causes responsible for bringing
about the Glorious Revolution in England. This Revolution, it has
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rightly been said, grew from the policies of James II who ruled over
the country in a manner which made him unpopular. His blind
support for Catholicism and his coming into conflict with the
Parliament proved very costly for him.
The people of England, were already much dissatisfied with
the policies followed by James II. They were particularly sick of his
pro-Catholic attitude and for his undermining the authority of the
Parliament. Accordingly both the Whigs and the Tories held a secret
meeting where it was decided that James II be dethroned and in his
stead his son-in-law, the William of Oranges should be invited. In
pursuance of his decision an invitation was extended to William
through Amiral Herbert.
This invitation was most welcome for William. It was time
when France had plans to bring Holland, over which William ruled,
under his control. William was thus in need of all foreign assistance,
which he could get, to strengthen his position, against France. As
soon as he received the invitation he gladly accepted that and landed
in England with a strong army of 15,000 soldiers. On receipt of the
news of arrival of William, James came out with a strong army of
20,000. However, very soon he realised that very many soldiers and
even his daughter had left him. This very much dismayed him. He
had no other alterative but to leave the country with his Queen and
infant son. This royal family went as fugitive to France, where it was
well received by Louis XIV. The throne thus laid vacant, William
was received with open arms by the people of England, as soon as he
came as victorious to the country. Soon after a Convention
Parliament was convened to decide the future course of action. This
parliament ruled out the possibility of calling back James II or
offering throne to his son. William himself rejected the idea of acting
as the Regent of his Queen, if crown was offered to her. After
prolonged discussions the Conventional Parliament decided that
James II should be treated to have vacated his throne by his flight
and that the same was lying vacant. It also decided that the throne be
offered jointly to William and Mary on giving an undertaking that
they would accept Parliamentary institutions and traditions. The new
sovereigns accepted the supremacy of Parliament and other terms of
Bill of Rights.
It was with the acceptance of Bill of Rights that long drawn
struggle between the Parliament and the Stuart Kings came to an
end. This end came by very peaceful means and without any
bloodshed. It is historically known as Glorious Revolution.
 104
A question that rises is a to how far is it correct or justified
to call Glorious Revolution as Glorious. Some thinkers make us
believe that it was not at all revolution in the sense that monarchy
continued to be the form of Government. But this tentamounts to
underestimating the significance of this great historical event which
reduced the strength of monarchy, brought an end to the theory of
Divine Rights of Kings and established the Supremacy of
Parliament. It was really glorious because:
1. In brining this change all the sections of British society
joined hands. They were agreed dethrone James II and in his
place bring William of Oranges on the throne.
2. It was Glorious because it was brought about without any
civil war, bloodshed or instability in the political structure of
the country.
3. It was a revolution in which there was no dislocation. All the
sections of the society were equally benefited by it. All
unwanted, uncalled for and undue restrictions were removed
and people now began to enjoy considerable freedom and
autonomy. Both the judges as well as the masses got
considerable freedom in administering religious affairs.
Religious freedom once again began to be enjoyed. Thus
Revolution did not benefit a particular section of society, but
benefited all.
4. Revolution gave unity to the country. The Catholics and
Protestants on the one hand and Whigs and Tories on the
other now came nearer to each other. Thus their mutual rift
and disunity, was replaced by unity.
5. It was Glorious because England, which was under pressures
and strains from France, now emerged as a powerful nation.
Now both Holland and England combined together and
threatened France. Economic benefits which France was
now getting were denied to it and made available to the
people of England.
It is therefore safe to say that changes which came to
England in 1688, were really very far reaching. These were
revolutionary in nature and character. There is thus every
justification to say that England witnessed the Glorious Revolution
in 1688.
Before William and Mary came on the throne of England,
they agreed to accept supremacy of Parliament and assured that they
will not act contrary to its wishes. They accepted the provisions of
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Bill of Rights. Bill regarded as a basic component of Britain's
unwritten constitution, the product of the 17th-century conflict of
power between Stuart monarchs, their subjects, and Parliament.
The bill incorporated the Declaration of Rights, the
statement of terms on which the Crown of England was offered to
the Prince and Princess of Orange. Their acceptance of it permitted
them to become William III and Mary II; with their royal assent in
December 1689 it became an Act of Parliament.
The bill stated that James II had tried to destroy the
Protestant religion, laws, and liberties of the kingdom. It confirmed
limitations on sovereigns; they could not exercise suspending or
dispensing powers, levy money, or keep a standing army in time of
peace without Parliament's consent, or use their prerogative to set up
new law courts.
Liberties of subjects were acknowledged, with emphasis on
those of Parliament. All Englishmen had the right to petition the
king, to be free from excessive bail, and to be tried by a jury of
freeholders if accused of treason. Parliament should have free
elections, and be summoned frequently, and members should be
given complete freedom of speech.
The monarch retained the prerogative of making war and
peace, powers of patronage, such as choosing his or her own
ministers, summoning, proroguing (discontinuing), and dissolving
Parliament, and minting coinage.
Finally, succession to the throne was settled on the heirs of
James's daughter Mary, then those of her sister Anne, then those of
William, stipulating that the position was prohibited to any Roman
Catholic or anyone married to a Roman Catholic. This last condition
stands to this day. The bill established the supremacy of an Act of
Parliament; monarchs had to rule through Parliament, but were given
the means to do so.
The constitutional nature of the bill helped justify the term
“Glorious” given to the events of 1688-1689, following the
autocratic rule of the Stuarts. Combined with the Toleration Act
(1689), the Triennial Act (1694), and the Act of Settlement (1701), it
provided the foundations on which government rested following the
Glorious Revolution.
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How Can Smoking be Discouraged Among the
Young?
“Multinationals have no future for their product in the
developed markets. That is why they are trying to increase their
marketplace by selling cigarettes in the developing countries,” says
Dr. Stephen J. Bourke, expert in respiratory medicine from the
University of Newscastle Upon Tyne, U. K.
What is really dangerous – no milder word will suffice – is
that multinationals and big companies are targeting adolescents.
There is a multi-pronged attack to get the young boy or girl to
smoke. This is done through colourful advertisements in the visual
media and sponsorship of major sports and cultural events. In house,
there are whispers that employees of tobacco companies have to
smoke if they want furtherance in their careers. And directed at the
adult smoker who might be thinking of giving it up are nicely-
worded press releases and advertisements which “found” that
smoking has no link to disease.
Dr. Bourke is firm that the link is there, a strong one too.
“More than fifty per cent of patient with lung cancer are smokers,”
he said in an interview. As for chronic lung disease, he has patients
in their fifties and sixties whose lungs are so badly damaged by
smoking that they need to take domicilary oxygen treatment. These
people, who are in no fit condition to lead normal lives leave alone
go to work, keep oxygen concentrators at home with the ambient air
of higher percentage of oxygen.
Dr. Bourke is equally convinced of the link between
smoking, especially the passive variety, and asthma. Children from
families where patients smoke have higher asthma, he says.
Epidemiological surveys too have revealed that children of smoking
parents especially if the mother is a smoker, have a greater
prevalence of asthma and severe asthma, more abnormalities of lung
function and greater hyper-responsiveness (of the airways), than
children of non-smokers.
A startling piece of information – the smoke inhaled from a
cigarette contains as much carbon monoxide as car exhaust. Carbon
monoxide in tobacco smoke displaces oxygen from red blood cells
so that less oxygen reaches the heart. And the oxygen that does reach
the heart is used less efficiently because chemicals in smoke lower
the levels of a key enzyme called cytochrome oxidise. Smoke also
activates platelets in the blood, making clot formation more likely.
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So, there is no point in wearing a mask while driving through heavy
traffic and then reaching for a cigarette at the end of the journey to
relieve tension.
While epidemiological studies linking smoking and cancer
can be contested as being circumstantial, evidence at the molecular
level cannot be so dismissed. In a Californian laboratory, a technique
called chromosome painting has been used to detect damaged
stretches of DNA in smokers. The specific damage is called
translocation, a phenomenon that is implicated in cancer (New
Scientist). And a research team at the John Hopkins University, U.S.
has found that smoking dramatically diseases mutations in a gene
called p53, that normally suppresses the growth of cancer. Mutations
in p53 are believed to contribute to cancer’s inception and growth.
Further, the study indicates that consumption of alcohol abets the
process.
In the U.S. years of campaigning are finally paying
dividends. After the Environmental Protection Agency declared that
second and smoke is a carcinogen, the Occupational Health
Administration is proposing rules that would ban or seriously restrict
smoking in every workplace. In a big boost to the antismoking lobby,
the U.S. President Mr. Bill Clinton, proposed sweeping regulations
intended to curtail smoking among teenagers, including a ban on
vending machine sales, sharp new limits on tobacco companies
sponsorship of sports events and advertising aimed at young people
and a requirement that all buyers of cigarettes show proof that they
are 18 years of age. The President’s announcement accepted the
Food and Drug Administration’s findings and the nicotine in
cigarettes should be declared an addictive drug.
In Asia too, this temper is catching on. Stringent restrictions
relating to vending machines and selling cigarettes to anyone under
the age of 18 have either come into force or are soon to be enforced
in South Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan and Thailand.
Unfortunately, in Pakistan there is little campaigning save
the statutory warnings printed in small print on cigarette cartons and
advertisements. The problem of smoking is widespread in Pakistan
no studies have been done to estimate what percentage of the
population are smokers.
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True Socialism Still to Come!
In recent years socialism has been discredited in the ramparts
of Eastern Europe, it is as if socialist ideologies have lost right to
cling to their convictions. Since the Soviet Union has ceased to be,
non seemingly has the prerogative any more to defend, for example,
the public sector, or campaign for the reduction of income
inequalities, or protest against intrusion of foreign capital into their
lands. There have been other setbacks. The wholesale assault on
ideological beliefs apart, the petering out of Third World solidarity
can be directly related to the apocalypse in eastern Europe. The non-
aligned Movement perhaps had its early inspiration from other
sources, but it really came to life because it found a role for itself in
the years of the Cold War. The Movement has, to all appearances,
lost its profession now that, with the cessation of the socialist bloc,
non-alignment is deprived of its raison d’etre. True, in certain
quarters non-alignment tended to be defined as the propensity to
move up and down on both sides of the street. In its quintessence, it
nonetheless represented a certain dignity of thought and action and
enabled the Third World to assert its separate personality. It also
reflected a genre of courage. A defiance marked the demeanour of
the nations who swore by non-alignment: we do not have might; we
do not often have resources even; but we are not sacred of the ratting
of the saber from them, to criticise them, to offer them creative
solutions to problems which they in their folly have been responsible
for in the first instance.
That moral peak has disappeared. The Third World countries
continue to strut about; nobody particular cares for them.
Surprisingly, many of the erstwhile major domos of the Non-Aligned
Movement are not realising that the halo specimen: it was because
the socialist bloc had chosen to black to the hilt the western powers,
including the United States, which had respected them.
The disappearance of the socialist system in eastern Europe
has had grave repercussions in another major area, namely, in the
assessment of the role of economic planning towards fostering social
and economic growth. It is perhaps bordering on tautology to suggest
that the disintegration of the socialist politics in eastern Europe has
coincided with the crumbling of command economy. The casualty of
the process gained in strength is that it is the abysmal performance of
centralised economic planning which was responsible for the
socialist debacle in eastern Europe; had the planned system
 109
succeeded in delivering the goods and services. If new generation in
eastern Europe had clamoured for socialism it could have been
saved. This is a serious charge and deserves to be examined with
some care.
The command economic system failed to deliver
sophisticated consumer goods. It did not come up with massive
supplies of colour television sets, two-door refrigerators, slick
passenger cars and luxurious textiles and other fineries. It either
could not, or did not care to study the transformed mind-set of the
grand-children great-grand-children of the Bolshevik Revolution. It
failed to meet the challenge of the social convulsion resulting from
the arrival of satellite television channels which made nonsense of
assumption about supposedly unbridgeable political and ideological
divides. There should be no scope of dissembling here: that new
generations in socialist societies did succumb to the lure dangled
from across the borders. Thus it may be said the system suffered
from a debilitating deficiency. If neglected the task of building the
socialist man as envisaged by Marx and Engels and Lenin. One can
scan the syllabi pursued in schools, gymnasia and universities in the
east European countries in the post-Second World War decades. The
creation of the socialist man was, quite evidently, not a part of the
political agenda and therefore excluded from the academic fora. The
emphasis was on assembly-line production of unalloyed technocrats,
who were supposed to fill slots within an unthinking, unquestioning
bureaucracy. The challenge of creating the socialist man was
basically the theme which sparked the Cultural Revolution in China
in the sixties. It had however few customers elsewhere in the
socialist world. And in China too, it soon became the victim of its
own excesses.
Once the satellites were marshalled in the cause of global
telecommunications, East Europe proved to be the easiest of
pickings. The youth, in overwhelming numbers and along with them,
significant sections of urban groups were ready to pursue the mirage
of the life style of West Europe and North America beamed by the
electronic media.
A general uprising was thus almost made to order. In most of
the countries, the system collapsed from within. What has ensued is
what Americans called Monday-morning-quarterbacking. It is
relatively easy to heap the blame on the central command system for
the collapse since the planning apparatus was in each east European
country responsible for the overall production schedule and its
 110
breakdown into different commodities and services. But the puzzle
remains. Did the economic command system capsize because of its
own deficiencies, imperfections and internal contradictions, or
because it was at the receiving end of wrong directives? Instructions
transmitted by the top echelon of the political hierarchy were without
question often ineptly laundered in a wrong way, sometimes they
were amended or modulated on the sly to suit the convenience of
functionaries at different levels of the economic command, and at
other times data on production and costs were fudged. But the crucial
major decisions-making which wagged the tail of the economic
programme, and not the other way round.
The occupants at the top of the political hierarchy were the
final arbiters of two crucial decisions which defined both the long-
term pattern of growth and the availability of different categories of
goods and services in the immediate period. The first decision was
with respect to the proportion of the national product to be
appropriated for savings and investment (the two coinciding in a
near-closed economy); the second related to the allocation of
assigned investible resources among the different producing sectors.
Both decisions were in essence political. True, the party
leadership could – and did – solicit information and views from the
economic planners which could help it to make up its mind. But the
onus of the final decisions rested on it. If the consequences of these
decisions were disenchantment, riots and near-insurgencies, finally
leading to the disintegration of the system, these were the direct
outcome of the political process at work. The leadership transmitted
the orders. It is in response to such orders that the command
apparatus produced specific goods or did not produce them, or
produced goods that were not matched either in quality or quantity
by what the demand signalled.
Since the congress, where party units at the grassroots level
were represented and represented grassroots level party units was the
supreme authority, the possibility of views expressed not being
transmitted to the higher or highest bodies was assumed to be
remote. On the contrary, in such an arrangement the centre was
obliged to obey signals from below. On the one hand the collective
judgement that was formed benefited from the wisdom and
knowledge that the leading cadres were invested with and on the
other, with the practical experience and information gathered at the
grassroots. Democratic centralism thus reflected the unity of theory
 111
and practice and contributed the basis for the formation of a self-
correcting and self-redeeming vanguard.
The shadow, however, fell at certain crucial junctures. There
are few doubts that the centralism of the kind delineated by Lenin
and his comrades was violated times without number within the
international socialist political movement. It is a humid chapter in the
history of socialism. Democratic centralism was made to stand on its
head. Democracy gradually disappeared, centralism held centrestage.
The leaders, who were idolised, took it for granted that such idolatry
did no harm to the tenets of socialism or to the functioning of the
system. Once the spirit of democracy was enfeebled, lower echelons
of the political structure tended to be mowed down by loyalists and
yesmen who would, in all seasons, do the biding of those superior to
them in the hierarchy. Only the form of democratic centralism was
maintained. The superstructure took the base almost for granted.
What masses thought or felt on the major political, social or
economic questions of the day ceased to be important. The views of
the leaders were rendered into axiomatic truth and had to be
supported by extempore empirical exercises that were often
indistinguishable from plain cheating.
Whether, if democratic centralism were allowed the fullest
rein, the command economy could have staved off the crisis of
socialism caused by the mismatch between demand and supply
remains an open question. It is nevertheless important to have the
formulation right. The command economy did not fail the socialist
polity, it is the latter which was the dominant element in the system
that guided the impulses, and shaped the activities of the economic
command.

Cultural Pluralism in a Changing World

For most people culture suggests high artistic or intellectual
achievement, the development of art and science, the humanities,
philosophy, the expression of the genius of a people. For the social
scientist it includes all this and much more; it may be defined as
embracing everything that a person acquires as a member of society;
all the habits and capabilities, which are produced by the group. It
may be expressed in works of art or scholarship, but also in what we
eat and the way we dress, in the nature of our relationship to
members of our family or to others in the society. In our system of
values, in the education we receive, in our ideas of good and bad, in
 112
the kind of houses we build, in the expectations and hopes we have
for the future, in our attitude toward strangers.
This list is far from complete, but it should suffice to
indicate the range and complexity of the content of cultures. It is not
surprising that a number of writers have described culture as a
concept of major importance in the social science because of the
demonstration of the extent to which we belong. In that connection it
has served as a needed corrective to the widespread notion that
differences in the way of life of different groups are determined
mainly, if not exclusively, by biology or race. It is this wider concept
of culture which is used in what follows.
It is perhaps not too surprising that in the history of human
contacts most groups have been much more impressed by their
differences from others than by the similarities. All too frequently
this has been associated with the belief that if they are different from
us they must be inferior. In the language of many of the pre-literature
societies described by anthropologists the expression ‘that people’
referred only to one’s own group; other groups were often
considered strange, exotic, inferior, somewhat less than human. This
attitude, although widespread, is not necessarily universal, but it has
certainly played an important part in the relations between people,
not only in the obvious cases of colonisation and other forms of
exploitation, but even in situations which are motivated by liberal
high-minded programmes such as technical assistance or
cooperation, in which the receiving areas are expected to adopt the
standards and models of the donors.
In this respect, however, it is possible to identify certain
counter-currents, characterised by a greater willingness to recognise
the rights of others to their own cultural identity, and by a greater
concern on the part of those ‘others’ to maintain that identity. In the
USA, for example, the sociologist Milton M. Gordon has
distinguished three stages in the approach to the complex American
ethnic structure. The first, Anglo-conformity, demanded “the
complete renunciation of the immigrants ancestral heritage in favour
of the behaviour and values of the Anglo-Saxon core group;” the
second, the melting-pot idea, envisaged “a biological merger of the
Anglo-Saxon peoples with other immigrant groups and a blending of
their respective cultures into a new indigenous American type” the
third, characterisation the present situation as cultural pluralism,
which seeks “the preservation of the communal life and significant
portions of the culture of the later immigrant groups within the
 113
context of American citizenship and political and economic
integration into American citizenship and political and economic
integration into American society.” Problems remain as to the extent
to which such a goal is fully possible or desirable, but certainly the
acceptance of a variety of cultural forms within the nation-state is
much greater now than it was in the past. The same is true for other
countries such as Yogoslavia, the Philippines, Belgium and France,
not always to the same extent, but in the same direction.
On the other side of the picture, various ethnic groups in a
number of different countries are now actively seeking the
preservation of their own cultural identity. One of the most striking
recent instances of an ethnic group seeking to establish and maintain
its cultural identity is that of the Blacks in the United States. Slavery
and its aftermath of an interior socio-economic position within the
larger community were clearly not conducive to the development of
a positive sense of identity.
What happened during the 1960s was something
approaching a psychological revolution. There was a refusal to
accept the notion of “cultural deprivation”, since the position of the
Blacks was that they had their own culture. With that went the
development of a whole complex philosophy (or ideology) of
identity. This included the concept of black Power, the slogans
“Black is beautiful” and “I’m proud to be Black” African roots and a
Black or African culture; Black nationalism. Black psychologists and
psychiatrists spoke of a new Black ethic based upon racial
awareness, high-esteem, identity and pride; a sense of adequacy and
security.
One aspect of culture which Blacks have emphasised is that
their self-identity is always a people-identity; “I am because we are,
and because we are, therefore I am,” This is seen to be in contrast
with the Western emphasis on the self as individually unique and
different. In a recent book by an American social scientist, Edmund
Glenn, an African ambassador in Washington is quoted as saying:
“The source of the greatest misunderstanding between Americans
and Africans is the positive value attached by the Americans to
individualism, and the negative value attached to it by Africans.”
In France today we are witnessing a striking development of
concern with ethnic identity and the preservation of minority
cultures. In Brittany, Corsica, ‘Occitanie’, etc. this tendency has
increased in strength as it has also among the Catalans and minorities
in the United States and Canada, the Maori in New Zealand, the
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aboriginal population in Australia and other ethnic groups in many
parts of the world.
All of these developments appear to be in a direction which
we should welcome. The UNESCO Declaration on Race in 1967
includes a statement to the effect that “ethnic groups which suffer
discrimination sometimes accepted or tolerated by the dominant
group if they totally give up their cultural identity……Ethnic groups
should be encouraged to preserve their cultural values, thus
contributing to the enrichment of the total human culture.”
Culture, as has already been indicated, refers to behaviour
which is specifically human and also to the distinctive ways of life
found in different human populations. From this point of view of
education for international understanding, it has frequently been
suggested that it is important to supply information as to how others
behave; although such information does not necessarily lead to
friendly attitudes, it does seem safer to base our relations with other
people on knowledge rather than on ignorance. On the other hand,
the psychologist Gordon Allport suggested a number of years ago
that educators had gone too far in stressing in difference among
peoples, and presenting others as strange and even exotic in their
behaviour. He called instead for an “encyclopaedia of human
similarities”, with greater stress on the common-human. A more
reasonable position would be to include both the resemblances and
the differences. Our understanding of culture requires a concern with
both similarities and differences, and also with the ease and
likelihood with which the differences occur.
A serious difficulty arises when we attempt to identify the
characteristics of a particular culture. Every group is a complex, with
variations in behaviour according to social class or status,
occupation, education or role; the kind of culture exhibited or
absorbed by the individual will be somewhat different for men and
women, for young and old, for each individual; in a nation-state it
may vary considerably from one region to another. These variations
are often characterised as sub-cultures, but it is not easy to determine
how many subcultures should be distinguished. In addition, cultures
changes. How much continuity is there between Czarist and
Communist Russian, Elizabethan and Victorian England, or the
France of Louis XIV and today?
In connection with cultural change, there is an important
development in recent years which is usually defined as the ‘counter-
culture’, because of the position taken by its adherents in relation to,
 115
and often in opposition to the prevailing values of the larger
community. It is mainly confined to the young in industrial societies;
it denies the relevance of many of the ideals of the parents; it is not
concerned with making preparation for the future, but insists on
living intensely the experience of the present (the now generation).
Success is seen not in material terms but as personal development,
self-fulfilment, self-realisation.
One aspect of this movement is particularly striking in
connection with cultural variations. For many of the devotees of the
counter-culture, salvation is to be found in the religions of the Orient.
Many parents and teachers of the young in revolt against their
society find it hard to understand the attraction of Zen Buddhism or
Hinduism, but the emphasis on contemplation and inner peace must
seem very palatable to those trying to escape from a society which
stresses hard work and material success. Not only do the Eastern
religious provide an alternative style; they also reduce or remove any
feelings of guilt that may be felt as the result of defection from the
goals which the young had been brought up to respect, but which no
longer satisfied them.
The whole movement included within the concept of the
counterculture has lost many of its adherents, and is frequently
considered to have abandoned a good part of its programme. This
may be the case, but recent research on the attitude of young men
and women with regard to work and their future, indicates that at
least some of its components continue to have an impact.
We turn now to number of specific issues in connection with
culture contact in the contemporary world which create problems for
institutions like UNESCO and the United Nations and for all those
who agree with them that the variety of human cultures should, as far
as possible, be preserved. These issues take the form of apparent
contradictions or paradoxes, which require careful consideration.
The first of these relates to the general programme of
technical assistance or cooperation designed to improve the standard
of living in developing countries, but which in practice involves the
introduction of industrial and technological models from the
‘modern’, usually the Western world. This, too, reflects the United
Nations programme; the question arises as to whether it is
compatible with the survival of traditional cultures. The American
anthropologist Edward Hall reminds us that the various facets of a
culture are inter-related: “touch a culture in one place and everything
else is affected.” The Australian psychologist Stephen Bochner
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insists that “there are many examples of societies which have lost
their cultural integrity as the price for modernisation.”
Such ‘moderation’ is, however, precisely what the leaders of
the developing Johan Caltung points out that Third World
representatives are urging the creation of “a New International
Economic Order (NIEO) to have faster industrialisation, increasing
exports, better raw material prices, more financial and technological
transfers.” The question then arises: Can this be done without
destroying, or at least disrupting, the existing indigenous, traditional
culture?
It has frequently been pointed out that there is a tendency in
the industrially world to see itself as a universally valid model to be
imitated by others. In this connection Galtung analysis the important
question of human needs, their universal and variable character,
paying more direct attention to what the recipient societies want, and
less to what the donors think they ought to want. What they want
may, however, be difficult to determine since the political leaders
and the leaders in many developing countries have themselves
adopted a position close to that of the Western world.
The fact remains that technological change is not always
accompanied by the disappearance of traditional culture. There can
be no doubt as to the industrial and technical achievement of the
Japanese, but at the same time they have retained many distinctively
Eastern and national traits. It has been suggested, for example, that
their life continues to be affected by the notion of mutual
dependence, whereas the West, centred on the individual, tends to
develop more self-reliance. In Japan a business enterprise, no matter
how large, is seen in the image of a household, with the
accompanying interdependence and loyalty characteristic of the
family.
There is a second paradox to be considered. The United
Nations/UNESCO position is in favour of contact among the people
of the world, and extensive programmes of “exchange of persons”
have been developed by both national and international agencies.
Bochner, however, in discussing the forces antithetical to cultural
preservation, includes international education exchange “which acts
as the main vehicle for the uncritical diffusion of Western culture
and therefore the erosion of non-Western life style.”
The real question we ought to ask ourselves is whether,
among the patterns of universal character put forward there is one
more likely to respect diversity in the overall development scheme.
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For there are many advantages in diversity and these advantages are
not only cultural but also economic. Are there, then, patterns and
ideologies which, while necessarily being presented as there are –
that is of universal character – are more likely than others to
maintain diversity rather than consider it as an obstacle to
development, and how can they be applied?

Democracy
The word democracy has many meanings, but in the modern
world its use signifies that the ultimate authority in political affairs
rightfully belongs to citizens. There was a time when democrat was a
term of abuse, virtually synonymous with mob rule or anarchy.
Today democracy's connotations are honourable. This is especially
true given the growth of democratic trends in Eastern Europe
following the collapse of the Soviet empire. Dissidents in these
societies evoked democracy as the ideal alternative to a bureaucratic,
authoritarian state. A transition to democratic regimes appears to be a
dominant political pattern at the end of the 20th century.
Whereas in centuries past there were principled opponents to
democratic political rule, such antidemocrats are rarer today in
nearly all societies. Democracy's opponents tend to be
fundamentalists who favour theocratic regimes or adversaries who
find democracy wanting because it seems not to meet certain abstract
standards of justice or perfect freedom. Because democracy is so
much in favour, even dictators and authoritarians embrace the
democratic idiom to characterize their regimes and their actions. As a
result, the 20th century has seen a proliferation in the meanings of
democracy, though not all evocations of democracy, past or present,
are credible. The leaders of the Soviet-dominated authoritarian
regimes of Eastern Europe called themselves “worker's republics”
and wrapped themselves in the mantle of democracy. The People's
Republic of China proclaims itself democratic even as protestors
demanding freedom of speech and of the press, hallmarks of
democratic polities, are routinely imprisoned. No one, it seems,
wants to be called “antidemocratic.”
In view of the variety of ways in which the term democracy
is used, the only way to distinguish between arbitrary definitions and
coherent ones is to observe under what circumstances positive or
negative judgments are made concerning the absence or presence of
democratic institutions. For example, when communists classified
the former Soviet Union as a socialist democracy and denied that
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Spain under the regime of Gen. Francisco Franco had an organic
democracy, the reasons listed for denying the democratic nature of
the Spanish state would also apply to the communist states these
advocates had labelled democratic.
The converse is also true. Defenders of Franco's
authoritarian order characterized Spain as a democracy in some sense
and scornfully rejected the view that communist countries were
democracies in any sense. But the reasons they gave for refusing to
describe communist regimes as democratic largely invalidated their
ascription of a democratic character to Spain during the years of
Franco's reign.
Proceeding in this way, and using the historical context to
control specific applications of the term, a central or basic concept of
democracy may be presented that will approximate most non-
arbitrary uses. Democracy is a form of government in which the
major decisions of government—or the direction of policy behind
these decisions—rests directly or indirectly on the freely given
consent of the majority of the adults governed. This makes
democracy essentially a political concept even when it is used—and
sometimes misused—to characterize non-political institutions.
Democracy as a political process is obviously a matter of
degree—depending on the areas of society open to political debate
and adjudication and the number of adults qualifying as citizens
within the political system. The differences between non-democratic
and democratic states are sometimes characterized as being “merely”
one of degree. But this rhetorical ploy is used to minimize and
confuse the difference between democratic and non-democratic
states.
It becomes necessary, therefore, to supplement the above
definition with a working conception that will enable us to
distinguish democratic regimes from others. One such working
conception is the view that a democratic government is one in which
the minority or its representatives may peacefully become the
majority or the representatives of the majority. The presupposition is,
of course, that this transition is made possible by, and expresses the
freely given consent of, the majority of the adults governed. The
implications of the presence of freely given consent call attention to
the difference between ancient democracies, which stressed only
majority rule as a validating principle, and modern democracies,
which since the birth of the American republic have stressed the
operating presence of inalienable rights.
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Before developing the implications of this distinction, it is
necessary to dissolve certain misconceptions that have often plagued
discussions of democracy. The first is the view that the only genuine
democracy is “direct” democracy in which all citizens of the
community are present and collectively pass on all legislation, as was
practiced in ancient Athens or as is the case in a New England town
meeting. From this point of view an “indirect” or “representative”
democracy is not a democracy but a constitutional republic or
commonwealth. This distinction breaks down because, literally
construed, there can be no direct democracy if laws are defined not
only in terms of their adoption but also in terms of their execution.
Delegation of authority is inescapable in any political assemblage
unless all citizens are in continuous service at all times, not only
legislating but also executing the laws together. The basic question is
whether the delegation of authority is reversible—controlled by
those who delegated it.
The second misconception is the identification of, or
confusion between, the terms democracy and republic. Strictly
speaking, a republican form of government is one in which the
position of the chief titular head of government is not hereditary. A
republic can have an undemocratic form of government, whereas a
monarchy can be a democracy. There is no necessary connection
between the two terms, although particular regimes usually embody
a complex mingling of republican and democratic principles.
Majority Rule and Minority Rights.
Any community in which a majority of the adult population
are slaves cannot be considered democratic. Nonetheless, there is a
valid distinction between the kinds of government that existed in
antiquity in which the freemen—however limited in numbers—were
the source of ultimate political authority and governments in which
the authority of government was vested in a dictator or an absolute
monarch. The former were democracies, even though the free
citizenry or its representatives recognized no limitation on the nature
and exercise of their rule and others enjoyed no political rights. The
result of elections in the ancient democracies often was the civil
equivalent of a military victory, and vae victis (“woe to the
vanquished”) often described the fate of the defeated. Under such
circumstances democratic rule was bloody, disorderly, and
frequently a preface to the emergence of a strongman or dictator.
Even where power was in the hands of the majority, there was no
democracy in the modern sense, for minority rights were not
considered.
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With the emergence of a theory of human rights beginning in
the 17th century and its explicit development in the writings of
Thomas Hobbes and, above all, John Locke, the way was prepared
for a conception of democracy in which the principle of majority rule
was a necessary but not a sufficient condition. The will of the
majority was to enjoy democratic legitimacy only if it was an
expression of freely given consent. The specific provisions of the
U.S. Bill of Rights and the unwritten, but not unspoken, assumptions
of the British constitution after the Cromwellian revolution
expressed the limits set by human rights on the power of ruling
majorities, minorities, or monarchs.
Majorities could do everything except deprive minorities of
their civil rights, including freedom of speech, of the press, and of
assembly and the right to a fair trial, the exercise of which might
enable the minority to win over the electorate and come to power.
Minorities might do everything within the context of these human
rights to present their case, but so long as they accepted the
principles of democratic organization, they were bound by the
outcome of the give and take of free discussion until another
opportunity for persuasion might present itself. Since unanimity
among human beings about matters of great concern is impossible,
the majority principle, insofar as it truly respects human rights, is the
only one that makes democracy a viable alternative to tyranny,
whether ancient or modern.
What are the signs of freely given consent, or under what
conditions is it present? Briefly, freely given consent exists when
there is no physical coercion or threat of coercion employed against
expression of opinion; when there is no arbitrary restriction placed
on freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly; where there is
no monopoly of propaganda by the ruling party; and where there is
no institutional control over the instruments or facilities of
communication. These are minimal conditions for the existence of
freely given consent. In their absence a plebiscite, even if
unanimous, is not democratically valid.
These may be considered negative conditions for the
presence of democratic rule. But it may be necessary for a
government to take positive measures to ensure that different groups
in the population have access to the means by which public opinion
is swayed. If, for example, an individual or a group had a monopoly
of newsprint or television channels and barred those with contrary
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views from using them, both the spirit and letter of democracy would
be violated.
Philosophers of democracy, especially Thomas Jefferson,
John Stuart Mill, and John Dewey, have called attention to certain
positive conditions the presence of which quickens and strengthens
the democratic process. Foremost among these is the availability of
education, allowing for an informed and critical awareness of the
issues and problems of the times. If the avenues of communication
are open, an educated electorate can become aware of the
consequences and costs of past policies and of the present
alternatives.
If, as the 17th-century philosopher Barukh Spinoza declared,
men and women may be enslaved by their ignorance, uninformed
freedom of choice may lead to disaster. It is this fear of mass
ignorance or the excitability and gullibility of “the herd” that is one
root of opposition to democracy. The more informed and better
educated the electorate, the healthier the democracy is. This, at least,
has been the nearly universal claim of most democratic theorists. But
modern means of mass communication and persuasion, especially
political advertising, present challenges to this fondly held dictum of
democratic faith. How does one distinguish between unacceptable
manipulation of the citizenry and wholly legitimate efforts to
persuade? There is no consensus on these matters, and the debate
promises to grow more intense given the explosion in information
technology in the last quarter of the 20th century.
Citizen Participation.
A second positive condition for the existence of an effective
democracy is the active participation of the citizens in the processes
of government. Participation is all the more essential as government
grows in size and complexity and as individual citizens may be
tempted to succumb to a feeling of ineffectiveness in the face of
anonymous forces controlling their destiny. The result may be wide-
scale apathy and a decay in democratic vitality, even when
democratic forms are preserved. “The food of feeling,” observed
Mill, “is action. Let a person have nothing to do for his country, and
he will not care for it.”
It was Dewey and Jane Adams, however, who stressed the
importance of participation in the day-to-day political affairs of the
street, the borough, the city, the region, the state, and the nation, to a
point where the whole concept of democracy acquired a new
dimension. By involving the greatest number of citizens in different
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ways and on different levels in political action, plural centres are
developed to counteract the tendency to expansion and centralization
of government, and the conditions of “a Great Community” are
established. “Democracy,” Dewey wrote, “is a name for a free and
enriching communion.” Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.,
evoking religious language, described American democracy as an
ideal of a “beloved community.” However, this generous conception
of a participatory democracy can be misunderstood and vulgarised.
Some have interpreted it to mean that there is no place for expertise
in a democracy, that all citizens are capable of administering all
things, and that all opinions not only have a right to be heard but also
are entitled to receive equal weight. This denies Jefferson's insistence
that one of the fruits of democracy is the emergence of an
“aristocracy of virtue and talent.”
This reinforces the third positive condition for effective
democracy. Intelligent delegation of power and responsibility is
essential because no community can sit in continuous legislative
session, and not everybody can do everything equally well. In
addition, it is necessary during periods of crisis to entrust certain
institutions and persons with emergency powers to ensure the
defense and preservation of the community.
Scepticism and Judgment.
The possibility of abuse of the delegation of power both in
ordinary and extraordinary times reinforces the fourth positive
condition for a healthy democracy. This is an intelligent scepticism
concerning claims to absolute truth, the possession of charisma
among leaders, or the infallibility of experts. As indispensable as
experts are, the assumption of both democratic thought and common
sense is that one does not have to be an expert to evaluate the work
of experts. One does not have to be a cook to judge the claims of
great cooks, a general to know when the war has been won or lost, or
a civil servant to discover whether the policy of bureaucracy leads to
well-being or woe. In a democracy the citizen is and should be king.
The problems and challenges of democracy are many. Some
flow from the tension between the emphasis on equality in the
democratic outlook and the desire to preserve individual variation
and freedom. Alexis de Tocqueville and other critical observers of
democracy, as well as friends of democracy such as Mill, feared that
its extension would lead to the erosion of personal freedom by
imposing legal restrictions on the use of property and on personal
behaviour.
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To some extent restrictions on individual freedom in a
democratic society flow not from the theory and practice of
democracy but from the complexity of social relations in a growing
community. So long as there is recognition of the area of personal
privacy that may not be invaded by public power, freedom faces no
intolerable threats. Despite the fears of Tocqueville and Mill, there is
far greater allowance for, and tolerance of, deviant ideas and
practices in all areas of personal life in contemporary democratic
society than was the case in the less democratic world of these
scholars. According to some latter-day voices, the sphere of personal
freedom has been extended to a point where law and order seem
threatened. This is particularly true in the United States, where the
proliferation of weapons of deadly force in private hands, under the
constitutional right to bear arms, is implicated in dangerously high
rates of homicide and assault in large urban areas. Many critics claim
that this right has been extended to the point where public safety, the
most basic right of all, is increasingly jeopardized. Balancing
individual rights against one another in light of the legitimate need of
communities for safety and security promises to be one of the great
democratic challenges of the 21st century.
The acceptance of the inviolable rights of minorities reduces
the danger of dictatorship by the majority in a democracy. However,
the rights of minorities cannot be construed as absolute; rather, these
rights depend, in part, on the consequences of the actions of
minorities, on the freedom and safety of majorities, or on society as a
whole. In addition, rights may conflict. Freedom of speech may
interfere with a person's right to a fair trial and sometimes, as when
an orator is inciting a lynching mob, with the victim's right to life. In
such circumstances the rights of a minority may have to be abridged.
What, then, is the difference between democratic and non-
democratic governments? Do not the latter also abridge the rights of
citizens in the alleged interests of the common good?
The first distinction is that democratic government
recognizes the intrinsic as well as the instrumental value of civil
rights. When it moves to restrict or abridge civil rights, it does so
slowly and reluctantly. Second, if and when the exercise of a civil
right creates a clear and present danger of a social evil that threatens
other human rights, it is abridged only for a limited period of time
and is restored as soon as normalcy returns. Finally, the restrictions
imposed by government agencies on every level in a democracy are
subject to appeal, review, and check by an independent judiciary.
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The relation between democracy and forms of property is
extremely tangled. It is sometimes argued that the collective
ownership of the means of production is incompatible with
democratic government, because the monopoly of control and the
necessities of a totally planned economy necessarily result in
dictatorship over the lives and movement of citizens.
It is true that in societies where the economic system was
centralized and socialized, as in the Soviet Union, or where it was
brought under complete political control, as in Nazi Germany,
democracy could not exist. In these situations political democracy
was destroyed, and control of all aspects of economic life was a
central feature of the overall assault on democracy. Measures of
partial economic socialization adopted in Britain and the
Scandinavian countries in the post–World War II era did not erode
democratic political processes. Nonetheless, although economic
centralization and democracy are not incompatible in principle, there
is an antidemocratic thrust to a completely socialized and state-
dominated economy. Concentrations of power of this magnitude will
always pose a threat to political democracy even as democracy must
challenge excessive centralization of power; hence political
democracy is either destroyed first as a prelude to such
centralization, or concentrating economic power foreshadows the
assault on democratic political forms.
Some have argued that capitalism is incompatible with
democracy because private ownership of the means of production
gives entrepreneurs control over the lives of those who earn their
living by using those means of production. Such ownership, it is
claimed, gives a disproportionate influence over the electorate to
those who command great wealth. Though not without merit, these
contentions overlook the fact that political processes in a democracy
make possible the limitation of economic power not only by
establishing free trade unions or other solidaristic organizations as
countervailing forces to capital but also by the use of taxation and
the regulation of elections. Laws protecting civil liberties guarantee a
dramatic extension of free expression and keep open the free
marketplace in ideas. Furthermore, new information-technologies
have decentralized political power, making it less likely that a
narrow elite will exert disproportionate control. This by no means
eliminates the disparity between social classes, but it does
complicate any simplistic picture of “haves” versus “have nots” as
characteristic of capitalist regimes.
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Furthermore, once we distinguish between personal property
—home, land, tools, books—and property in the large social
instruments of production—mines, factories, plantations—we can
appreciate the insight of Locke and Jefferson that ownership of the
former actually may be a source and guarantee of individual
freedom.
The origins of modern democracy are rooted in the scientific
revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries and in the industrial and
technological revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries. These
upheavals enlarged the imaginations of citizens and would-be
citizens by making what seemed merely possible probable. Thus they
transformed social relations to a point where persons whose status
was one of relative powerlessness—appendages of machines—began
to demand first suffrage and then their fair share of the social
product. The growth of political democracy depended more heavily
on the activities of trade unions, dissident religions, and social
reform movements than on the actions of traditionally established
institutions. Because power limits power, the landowning and
capitalist classes, in their struggles with each other, sought allies
among the lower classes and therewith extended the scope of
political suffrage and recognition in dramatic and irreversible ways.
With the extension of political suffrage, the middle and
lower classes acquired the strength and opportunity to carry
democratic principles into other dimensions of the social system. As
a result, a massive system of social security developed in most
democratic countries, and educational facilities and a higher standard
of living became available to greater numbers of citizens. The
welfare state emerged as a consequence of the influence of political
democracy on other areas of social life, particularly through the
redistribution of wealth.
The faith in democracy ultimately rests not in the belief in
the natural goodness of human beings but in the belief that most
human beings are open to democratic responsibility and possibility.
This faith derives from a notion of the human person as deserving of
recognition and respect. It is true that democracies are imperfect and
democratic citizens may do foolish or dangerous things. But the
democrat holds that the solution to such dilemmas is more informed
democratic action rather than salvation in a dictatorship, whether of a
single leader or of the proletariat. Those who have moved down this
latter path are responsible for much of the horror of 20th-century
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politics, with its millions of human beings lost to political terror and
millions others displaced, tortured, or tormented to varying degrees.
Democracy, as we have seen, is not indivisible—all or
nothing—in the sense that its political form necessitates the
extension of the democratic principle to other areas of experience. It
only makes an extension possible to those who have the vision,
courage, and intelligence to struggle for it. Nor is democracy
indivisible on the international scene in the sense that the world must
soon become one democratic community. Democratic regimes are
compelled to coexist with nondemocratic regimes for the sake of
peace and security.
What can be expected is that the ideals of freedom in
flourishing democratic cultures still struggling to solve problems of
poverty, ignorance, and violence have functioned and will continue
to function as an aspiration to the subjects of non-democratic
regimes. Having secured and extended democracy throughout the
years of the Cold War, the citizens of democratic states face new and
daunting challenges. Freedom may be infectious, but so are
nationalism and intolerance. “Eternal vigilance,” in Jefferson's
memorable phrase, is the continuing price citizens of a democracy
pay to sustain and secure freedom for future generations.

Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

The terms “civil liberties” and “civil rights” have no fixed
and uniform definition. Often they are used broadly and
interchangeably. One way of distinguishing the two phrases is to say
that a person enjoys a civil “liberty” when he is protected against
some government action, but enjoys a civil “right” when the law
confers upon him a positive power to do something. Thus the right to
speak freely would be a civil liberty; the right to use public facilities
on an equal basis would be a civil right.
In common usage “civil rights” often refers specifically to
the rights of minority groups to equal treatment, and sometimes the
phrase is used to mean non-political rights granted by law, such as
the right to own property. However the line is drawn between them,
civil liberties and civil rights taken together encompass freedom of
speech and religion, the rights afforded to criminal suspects, the
rights of citizens to participate in the political process, and the right
to equal treatment under law. Civil rights, in certain contexts, may
also be meant to include basic economic and social rights.
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Civil liberties and civil rights are considered a cornerstone of
a free society. They indicate the ways in which a society protects
individual freedom. But “freedom” also has many meanings. The
word may be used to mean the absence of external restraint. In that
sense, poor persons in the United States as well as rich ones are free
to travel to Europe. A second meaning of freedom requires that a
person have the opportunity to do something before he can be
considered free to do it. In that sense, only those who can pay are
free to go to Europe. A third sense of freedom is the freedom to do
what is right. Some thinkers have reasoned that a person is genuinely
free only when he or she believes what is true and does what is
morally correct. They argue that the freedom to believe error and to
do wrong is not true freedom. A fourth use of freedom refers to the
absence of psychological problems that inhibit individual action.
The first two of these senses of freedom are associated with
the relationship of individuals to government in a liberal democratic
society, and they are the only senses in which the term will be
discussed here. In a libertarian society preventing the dissemination
of error and reducing immoral acts to a minimum are not considered
central functions of government. Nor is eliminating, or reducing,
psychological tensions—an end that might be accomplished best by a
sharp limitation on freedom in the ordinary senses.
Although freedom—and the liberties and rights that protect
it—is an important good, it may conflict with other goods. The
speaker's freedom is maximized if he is allowed to incite a riot, but
the peace of society may require restraint. In many circumstances
different kinds of freedom conflict, as in the clash between a home
owner's claim to rent to whom he pleases and the claim of a member
of a racial minority to equal treatment. Another example is the
taxation of the rich for the benefit of the poor; the freedom of the
rich to spend their money in the way they choose is restrained, but
the freedom of the poor, in the sense of broader opportunity, is
enhanced.
The civil liberties and rights granted by the law of any
particular society reflect how that society has accommodated the
inevitable clashes of values. While most discussion, and this article,
focuses on how that adjustment is made by law, private institutions
also play an important role in determining the practical bounds of
individual freedom. If, for example, major private companies
discharged employees who expressed unpopular opinions, many
persons would hesitate to exercise their legal privilege to speak
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freely. More subtle influences, such as possible rejection by friends
and acquaintances, also constrain uninhibited discussion.
The kinds of civil liberties and rights enjoyed in the United
States and other democracies are the product of an essentially
modern view of the nature of man and society. It is by no means the
only modern view. Dictatorships, for example, whether Fascist or
Communist, rest on other conceptions.
The liberal democrat believes that every person has inherent
worth. Fulfilment of the individual may include participation not
only in political and social life but also in religious, artistic,
intellectual, and other activities that should not be subject to control
by government. Individuals should have the chance to work out their
own destiny, insofar as that is possible and consistent with the
interests of others.
Because truth and justice in political and social affairs are
difficult to ascertain, they are generally best arrived at by free and
open discussion. Unrestrained discussion is not only a legitimate
outlet for dissent, but it reduces the likelihood of more violent forms
of social protest. Because government officers are sometimes
arbitrary, and because the majority of the people may disregard
claims of individual liberty in times of crisis or supposed crisis, the
claims of individual liberty should be protected either by legal rules
that bind the legislature and executive, as in the United States, or by
historical traditions that restrain those in power, as in Britain.
Each person's interests are entitled to equal consideration.
Some libertarians believe that the government should only avoid
promoting inequality; others contend that the government should
reduce inequalities, at least to the extent of positively trying to
provide opportunities for those who are disadvantaged.
In the United States and to a lesser extent in Western Europe
there is considerable agreement on the tenets of freedom, but there is
sharp dispute over their philosophic underpinnings, their meaning
and application to particular problems, and the weight they should be
given as compared with other social interests, such as the
preservation of society from outside attack.
Although the civil liberties and rights of liberal democracies
reflect a distinctly modern conception of man, important elements of
that conception have been drawn from earlier periods, and members
of older societies had rights and liberties that resembled in varying
degrees those of the present. In Athens and other Greek city-states
ordinary citizens participated in the processes of government. In fact,
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given ancient Athens' small size and population (probably somewhat
more than 300,000 people), direct participation could be, and was,
much more extensive than in the modern nation-state. In Athens all
male citizens were entitled to attend the Assembly, which held the
ultimate power to govern. Magistrates and officials who ruled as
representatives of the people were selected by democratic means,
had short terms, and could not be re-elected. These election
procedures and the large popular juries of the courts assured wide
citizen involvement in governing. Although most of the important
political powers rested with the Council of Five Hundred, the council
was subject to control by the Assembly.
The democratic ideal of the city-state—that the government's
good is inseparable from the citizens' and that both goods can be
assured best by citizen participation—seems to liberal democrats a
great advance from the autocratic forms of government existing
outside Athens. But from the perspective of today the democracy of
Athens appears flawed in important respects. About one third of the
population were slaves with few rights. Furthermore, because Athens
had no procedure for conferring citizenship on foreigners who had
moved there or on their offspring, another considerable group of
residents had no political voice.
Finally, the city-state was founded on the idea that fulfilment
as a human being requires fulfilment as a citizen. In his Funeral
Oration, which nobly summed up the ideals of Athenian democracy,
Pericles said, “We … regard a man who takes no interest in public
affairs, not as a harmless, but as a useless character. …” Both Plato
and Aristotle adhered to the Athenian conception of the social nature
of man and the organic nature of society, in which all human
concerns are closely interrelated.
Locke argued that natural law bestowed on men in the state
of nature certain basic and indefeasible rights. The formation of
society, he said, could be viewed as a social contract in which some
rights are given up so that fundamental rights may be protected. The
existence of natural rights and the limited grant of power to
government given by the social contract restricted, in Locke's view,
the extent to which individual rights may be infringed. If a
government oversteps these bounds, resistance is justified.
Somewhat similar principles were developed by thinkers of
the 18th century French Enlightenment, and the Declaration of
Independence of the United States drew from both these sources.
Written by Thomas Jefferson, it declared “… that all men are created
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equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the
pursuit of Happiness. …” The same philosophy is expressed in the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), issued by
the National Assembly of France at the outset of the French
Revolution.

Air Pollution
The contamination of air by unwanted gases, smoke
particles, and other substances is generally considered a relatively
recent phenomenon. However, pollution of the air, particularly by
smoke, has plagued many communities since the beginning of the
Industrial Revolution. By the late 19th century there was
considerable agitation by citizens' groups in London who protested
the smoke-laden air of the city, but their protests were drowned out
by the clamour for industrial development. Complaints against air
pollution were registered elsewhere in Europe as well as in the
United States. Laws on air quality were first adopted as early as 1815
in Pittsburgh. Chicago and Cincinnati followed with smoke-control
measures in 1881. By 1912, 23 of the 28 American cities with
populations over 200,000 had smoke-abatement ordinances.
From the 1930s to the 1950s, when smoke pollution was at
its worst in the United States, air pollution was still regarded as a
nuisance worthy of only local attention. During that period, in a
number of Eastern and Midwestern industrial cities the smoke was so
thick, particularly during the winter, that at noon it was sometimes
nearly as dark as at midnight. Finally, the sheer soiling nuisance of
the problem provoked public outcries that resulted in the enactment
of smoke-control legislation, its partial enforcement, and visible
improvement in the atmosphere of a number of industrial cities.
These efforts were focused primarily on reducing smoke
from fossil fuels; particularly coal, by regulating the types of coal
that could be burned, by improving combustion practices, and in
some cases by using special devices to control emissions of particles
into the air. The replacement of steam locomotives by diesel engines
and the increased use of gas for heating also contributed greatly to
the reduction of air pollution.
In the 1940s a new type of air-pollution problem emerged.
When the residents of Los Angeles complained of smog, few people
suspected that smoke pollution and general air pollution were not the
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same problem. Los Angeles used virtually none of the fuels primarily
responsible for the smoke problems of other cities, and yet its smog
problem became worse. It was discovered that the Los Angeles smog
was not due primarily to smoke in the air but to the action of sunlight
on gases emitted by car exhausts and certain industrial processes.
The experience of Los Angeles in the 1940s revealed a general
pattern of air-pollution problems that developed in the 1950s and
1960s in cities elsewhere in the United States and in other parts of
the world. This pattern, characterized by rapid industrial growth,
development of metropolitan areas with their associated urban
centres and suburban satellites, and dependence on motor vehicles,
creates new gaseous and particulate emissions that complement,
interact with, and further complicate the action of the more common
pollutants.
Urban development, increased use of motor vehicles,
industrial expansion, construction and operation of large facilities
using fossil fuels for generating electricity, production of iron and
steel, petrochemicals, and petroleum refining gave rise to regional
air-quality problems in many areas of the United States. They are
manifest as seasonal episodes of unhealthy air quality in the Los
Angeles south-coastal basin and the Baltimore to Boston urban
corridor, and as regional hazes and poor visibility in the western
Great Basin, Appalachia, and Adirondacks. Another manifestation is
the acid-rain phenomenon in several parts of the United States and
Canada.
These contemporary air quality problems are due to a
combination of factors—the physical nature of urban and industrial
developments, the spatial density of emissions, land and weather
features that affect diffusion, dispersion, and transport of pollutants,
and the chemical and physical transformation of the plumes of
pollution that hang over cities and industrial centres. A wide range of
pollutants currently pose an ecological threat in cities all over the
United States and in other industrialized countries.
Transportation equipment—chiefly cars, motor rickshaws
and trucks—is the greatest source of air pollution in the Pakistan. It
is responsible for about 56% of the total. While motor vehicles—
automobiles and trucks—are the principal villains, aircraft, trains,
and boats can cause problems in certain areas—for example, airports,
railroad yards, and harbours. Although diesel engines in trucks and
other vehicles are minor contributors to the overall problem, they
produce objectionable odours and noxious fine particulate matter.
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Second in importance is stationary combustion—electric-
power plants and heating plants—which contributes about 22% of
the total air pollutants. Industrial processes are a close third, with
15% of the total. Miscellaneous pollution sources, forest fires,
agricultural burning, coal-waste fires, and solvent disposal contribute
5% of all pollutants, and solid-waste disposal, primarily through
incineration, accounts for the remaining 2%.
The worst episode of air pollution in modern times occurred
in London in 1952. That famous “killer smog” is believed to have
been responsible for 4,000 deaths. In the United States a similar
incident occurred in 1948 in Donora, an industrial town in the
mountains of western Pennsylvania. Almost half of the town's
14,000 inhabitants became ill, and 20 people died during the five-day
smog episode. A study indicated that many who survived the episode
suffered permanent health impairment. Another serious episode took
place in New York City in 1953 when 200 people died as a result of
high levels of sulfur oxides and particulate matter. The London,
Donora, and New York City episodes occurred when unusual
weather conditions lasting several days prevented dispersal of the
pollutants.
More important than the major disasters are the subtle, long-
range effects on human health caused by exposure to low-level but
prolonged air pollution. This type of exposure contributes to the
incidence of such chronic respiratory ailments as emphysema and
bronchitis and to reduced exercise performance by healthy children
and adults. It also contributes to higher mortality rates from other
causes, including cancer and heart disease. Smokers who live in
polluted cities have a much higher rate of lung cancer than those in
rural areas.
Among children, air pollution has been shown to be
associated with a high incidence of asthma, allergies, and acute
respiratory infection. Such childhood disorders may lead to chronic
disease in later life.
Although present knowledge of the health effects of those
specific contaminants so far identified is incomplete, the more overt
effects of several major classes of pollutants are well defined and are
known to result in about 15,000 deaths, 7 million sick days, and 15
million days of reduced performance each year, affecting almost one
of every five persons.
Abatement and control of pollution in Australia, Brazil,
Japan, and Mexico strongly focuses on smog problems in
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metropolitan centres. Smog in Mexico City, for example, is
particularly difficult to control because of the city's size, population,
elevation, high actinic radiation, terrain, and weather conditions.
These all favour seasonal accumulation of pollution and aggravate
smog formation from emissions of the many motor vehicles and
local industries. Motor vehicles in Australia and Japan are equipped
with emission-control systems, and state and local governments
inspect vehicles to ensure compliance. Brazil reduces transportation
pollution by use of clean-burning sugarcane alcohol as a partial
substitute for gasoline, and limits emissions from stationary sources.
Japan requires very advanced control systems for industrial
emissions in cities where land and weather conditions accentuate the
health risk of air pollution.

Nuclear War
Or
What would be the scene of the Earth after a
Nuclear War
Or
Devastation and havoc caused by a Nuclear War
Warfare involving the use of nuclear weapons called nuclear
war. The dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug.
6, 1945, and another on Nagasaki three days later, introduced the
most revolutionary weapon ever to be used in warfare. Suddenly, a
tool of warfare could create conditions at the earth's surface similar
to those at the centre of the sun. By today's standards the two bombs
dropped on Japan were small—equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT in
the case of the Hiroshima bomb and 20,000 tons in the case of the
Nagasaki bomb. Yet in these two attacks the damage was so
extensive and so many people were immediately killed that no
accurate death count was ever possible. Estimates vary from about
40,000 to 170,000 killed at Hiroshima and from 20,000 to 40,000 at
Nagasaki.
The two most common measures of the destructive power of
nuclear weapons are the kiloton and the megaton. A 1-kiloton
nuclear explosion releases as much energy as would an explosion of
1,000 tons of TNT. A megaton—1,000 kilotons—releases as much
energy as would an explosion of 1 million tons of TNT. Three 1-
megaton nuclear explosions would release the same amount of
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energy as all the bombs dropped in the six years of World War II. As
will be seen in the following sections, however, such comparisons do
not yield an accurate picture of the destructive potential of nuclear
weapons, since much of the energy they release differs in form from
that released by high explosives.
Prompt effects are those that occur in the interval
immediately following detonation of a nuclear weapon. When a
nuclear bomb explodes, an enormous amount of energy is released in
an extraordinarily short interval of time—within hundredths of
millionths of a second. In the case of a 1-megaton bomb, so much
energy is released into such a small volume that the temperature can
rise quickly to about 100 million degrees Kelvin—about five times
hotter than the temperature at the center of the sun.
High explosives such as TNT derive their explosive power
from chemical reactions. Almost all the power of the explosion is in
the expanding gases yielded by the reaction. In a nuclear explosion,
however, more than 95% of the explosive power is at first in the
form of intense radiation. The initial temperature near the center of
the explosion is so high that this radiant energy is of a frequency
many thousands of times higher than that of visible light. Since air is
not transparent at these frequencies, the radiant energy is quickly
absorbed by the surrounding air, creating a superheated sphere of
high-pressure glowing-hot gas—a fireball.
Because the fireball is so hot, it undergoes a violent
expansion, initially moving outward at several millions of miles per
hour, while radiating tremendous amounts of light and heat. The
rapidly expanding fireball in turn compresses the surrounding air,
forming a steeply fronted shock wave of enormous extent and power.
By the time the fireball reaches its maximum diameter of
several thousand feet (over a thousand meters), each section of its
surface is radiating about three times as much heat and light as a
comparable area of the sun itself. Under ordinary atmospheric
conditions at a distance of 2.5 miles (4 km) the fireball radiates more
than 1,000 times more heat and light than a noontime sun on the
earth's desert. Even at a distance of 6 miles (10 km) it radiates more
than 100 times as much heat and light. Thus, extensive fires would
accompany attacks against urban/industrial targets and be more
destructive than the shock wave.
The nuclear reactions that cause the explosion also create
harmful nuclear radiation (gamma rays and neutrons). Well-
documented studies of the relatively low-yield detonations at
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Hiroshima and Nagasaki indicate that nuclear radiation emanating
from the fireball was sufficiently intense at 0.7 to 0.9 mile (1.1–1.4
km) to kill or seriously injure unshielded or partially shielded
individuals. However, in the case of higher-yield weapons (100
kilotons to 10 megatons), unprotected individuals close enough to
the detonation point to suffer injury from nuclear radiations would
instead be killed by the far more intense effects of blast and heat.
The term “delayed” is applied to effects that follow the
formation of the fireball and the arrival of the initial shock wave.
Some such effects occur within minutes of an explosion, while others
may occur or persist months or even years after the detonations. The
three main delayed effects are radioactive fallout from dust that has
been mixed with radioactive bomb products and target debris; heat,
smoke, and toxic gases created by vast fires in and around target
areas; and depletion of the ozone layer by nitric and nitrous oxides
created by nuclear explosions.
The first of these phenomena—radioactive fallout—is
formed when a nuclear bomb explodes at such a low altitude that the
fireball touches or nearly touches the ground. When this occurs,
large amounts of material can be vaporized, lifted into the fireball,
and carried aloft, where they mix with the fireball's radioactive
materials. The result is a cloud of highly radioactive dust, which can
be carried great distances by wind before it drops from the air onto
the ground in the form of fallout. In the case of a 1-megaton weapon,
significant fallout is created at burst altitudes below about 0.6 mile (1
km).
Within 24 hours of a near-surface detonation, from 40% to
70% of the immense radioactivity in the cloud can be carried to the
ground as the dust settles. For a 1-megaton detonation, an area of
well over 1,000 square miles (2,600 sq km) could be so contaminated
with radiation-emitting dust that individuals who are unable to
immediately evacuate the area or find adequate shelter would suffer
serious injury or death from radiation. Especially heavy fallout
would result from near-surface nuclear explosions needed to destroy
hardened underground targets such as missile silos and military
command centers.
Long-term biological effects result from two of the most
abundant radioactive by-products contained in fallout—cesium-137
and strontium-90. Since the chemical properties of cesium resemble
those of the common body chemical potassium, cesium can find its
way into the organs of humans and other animals, where its
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radioactivity can cause cancer and other diseases. Similarly,
strontium-90 is chemically similar to calcium, another common body
chemical, and it, too, can become incorporated into people's bodies.
These two isotopes, which have radioactive half-lives of about 30
years, can present a serious long-term hazard.
A 1-megaton air or near-surface burst usually would
immediately initiate fires out to 6 or 7 miles (10–11 km) from the
detonation point. The devastation caused by large numbers of
simultaneously initiated fires can hardly be overstated. At the end of
World War II, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey found that each
70-pound (32-kg) incendiary dropped against targets classified as
highly flammable, was 12 times more effective, on a bomb-for-bomb
basis, than a 500-pound (225-kg) high-explosive bomb. Against fire-
resistant targets, the incendiaries were found to be one and half times
more effective. Thus, on a pound-for-pound basis, incendiaries were
about 10 to 85 times more destructive than high explosives.
In some cases—depending on time of year, atmospheric
visibility, and types of dwellings—a nuclear explosion could ignite
fires at ranges of 10 miles (16 km) or more. Conceivably, an area of
more than 300 square miles (775 sq km) could be set on fire within
minutes of a nuclear attack. Such superfires, often called firestorms,
would be far more devastating than most other fires in human
experience. Because of the large area of the fire, the fire zone would
act as a gigantic air pump, driving enormous volumes of air skyward.
The heat released from burning debris would drive air temperatures
to many hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit. As cooler air is drawn in to
replace the air pumped away by the action of the fire, the pumping
action of the fire would create very high ground winds, possibly of
hurricane force. Large amounts of poisonous smoke and gases would
be generated by these mass fires. Conditions in the fire zone could
therefore kill many more people than blast effects alone. In cities
struck by only a few nuclear weapons, firestorms probably would kill
more than two to three times as many people as would blast effects.
For low-altitude nuclear explosions in urban-industrial areas,
the combined effects of fires and fallout would create a deadly
environment for people who survive the prompt effects. Within
minutes or tens of minutes of such an attack, both fires and lethal
levels of radiation would involve large areas surrounding the
detonation point. The fires would spread, while the larger and
heavier pieces of radioactive debris would fall onto the target area
and surrounding countryside.
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A general nuclear war between superpowers might have
long-term effects on the earth's climate. In such a war, hundreds or
thousands of nuclear weapons might be detonated over highly
combustible urban/industrial targets. The resulting firestorms
possibly would inject massive amounts of smoke—along with
sulphur dioxide and other fire-produced gases—into the upper
atmosphere of the Northern Hemisphere. In addition, large amounts
of radioactive dust and nitric and nitrous oxides created in the high-
temperature radioactive environment of nuclear fireballs would be
injected into the atmosphere by the detonations themselves.
The massive amounts of soot, dust, and other materials
injected into the atmosphere would make it relatively opaque, greatly
reducing the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth's surface.
During the late spring and summer months, when substantial solar
heating of the earth normally occurs, the blockage of sunlight could
cause temperatures to drop—perhaps sharply—in mid-continental
regions of the middle latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. Coastal
regions, where the moderating effects of oceans are likely to be
important, would not suffer temperature drops as large as those that
might occur in the middle of a large continent. Also, the reduction in
surface temperatures probably would be small during winter
months, when surface temperatures are already low.
Due to the complexity and uncertainty of many atmospheric
calculations, estimates of the severity and duration of the summer
temperature drop vary widely. Additional variation is created by
differing assumptions about the number and characteristics of the
targets attacked in a nuclear war. The most pessimistic estimates
have led to the prediction that a major nuclear war could result in a
“nuclear winter,” with freezing or near-freezing summer
temperatures in mid-continental regions.
Even if nuclear attacks were confined to the Northern
Hemisphere, the climatic effects might not be limited to that region.
As the smoke-filled air at high altitudes in the Northern Hemisphere
became warmer, it might expand into the cooler upper atmosphere of
the Southern Hemisphere. This might set up a circulating pattern in
which dust-and-soot-laden air of the Northern Hemisphere upper
atmosphere spread south, while air from the lower atmosphere of the
Southern Hemisphere moved north.
As with all other climatic effects, the nature and scale of this
involvement is not well understood. Even though the changes in
land-surface temperatures from smoke spreading in the atmosphere
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would have serious ecological effects, these might be minor
compared with other effects on the weather. For example, some
research indicates that, under certain circumstances, shifts in weather
patterns would eliminate the monsoons that normally occur in India.
This would essentially eliminate agriculture on the Indian
subcontinent.
Other long-lasting climatic consequences might be caused by
nitric and nitrous oxides. These chemical compounds are formed
from nitrogen and oxygen in the very high temperatures and
radioactive environment of the early fireball. Typically, about 5,000
tons of the oxides are generated per megaton of yield. If the yield of
a nuclear detonation is a megaton or higher, the buoyancy and
momentum of the rising fireball will carry much of this material into
the stratosphere.
Nitric and nitrous oxides also may be injected into the
stratosphere by a second mechanism. In the aftermath of a nuclear
attack large volumes of the atmosphere around target areas could
become filled with thick, opaque smoke from mass fires.
Calculations indicate that much of this opaque smoke-filled air
would rise into the stratosphere as it is heated by the sun, carrying
additional amounts of nitric and nitrous oxides into the stratosphere.
If nitric and nitrous oxides should be carried to stratospheric
altitudes, they are expected to enter a complex series of chemical
reactions with the molecules normally present at those altitudes. The
end result of the reactions could be a loss of stratospheric ozone. The
full effects of this loss would not be felt until after the soot and dust
had settled out of the stratosphere, when the surface of the earth
would again be exposed to the full radiant energy of the sun. The
reduced levels of stratospheric ozone would then absorb a much
smaller than normal fraction of the sun's ultraviolet rays, and for
perhaps several years the level of ultraviolet radiation at the earth's
surface could be very much higher than normal. Since excessive
ultraviolet radiation injures living tissue, the reduction in
stratospheric ozone might cause widespread destruction of plant and
animal life.
The climatic effects here described are subject to
considerable uncertainty, both because the scientific basis for
predicting such effects is still under development and because no one
can know what course a nuclear war actually would take. Numerous
factors—such as the time of year, meteorological conditions, and
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targeting strategies—would affect the environmental consequences
of a nuclear war.

Nationalism
The term nationalism refers to an ideology based on the
notion that people who have a sense of homogeneity rooted in a
conception of a shared history and a common ethnicity, cultural
heritage, language, or religion should be united in a single nation-
state free of “alien” political, economic, or cultural influence or
domination. The “alien” may be internal, for example, the Russian
immigrants who flooded into Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia during
the five decades of Soviet occupation, or external, as in the case of
Great Britain, Belgium, or Portugal in relation to their colonies. The
consciousness of group identity and sense of the alien become
nationalism, an ideology, when they are linked to political
aspirations.
A political force rooted in 18th-century Europe, nationalism
has come to play an important role throughout the world. For two
centuries it has been one of the easiest and most effective means for
regimes and leaders of national or ethnic groups to generate political
support and influence. The disintegration of the Soviet Union and
Yugoslavia in the early 1990s resulted in an upsurge of nationalism
and in concerns about its role in contemporary domestic and
international politics. The disintegration of multinational states also
illuminates the underlying paradox of nationalism: it can be a force
for liberation and a force for repression, for consolidation and
disintegration, for ending conflicts and for bloodshed and war. Led
by nationalists, the republics of the Soviet Union gained
independence in 1991 without the use of force, but several have
sought to forcibly suppress nationalities or ethnic groups within their
own borders when these groups have demanded the right to self-
determination.
Partly because nationalism manifests itself in various guises
and partly because the term is used for different purposes, it is an
ambiguous concept. Scholars debate the meaning and role of
nationalism; political leaders and regimes may use it as a means to
influence and manipulate public opinion; and the general public may
regard nationalism as an emotional attachment to a mythical identity.
Compounding the difficulty of defining nationalism is the fact that
the term has been applied to a variety of phenomena that may be
related to but are distinct from nationalism: patriotism, chauvinism,
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xenophobia, racism, and popular sentiment. These concepts are more
limited than nationalism or are extreme manifestations of some
aspect of the concept. Nationalism is not simply a sentiment that
focuses on group distinctions. Nor is it simply loyalty to the state.
That concept is appropriately called patriotism. An excessive or
belligerent form of patriotism based on a belief of superiority of
one's own nation or state is chauvinism, named after Nicolas
Chauvin, a soldier in Napoleon Bonaparte's army. A fear and
loathing of foreigners or other ethnic groups is xenophobia, not
nationalism. Nor is racism, a belief that differences in human
conduct and achievement are determined by race, equivalent to
nationalism.
Finally, any analysis of nationalism is complicated by the
impossibility of disentangling its role from that of other political,
cultural, and economic influences. For example, it is difficult to
determine what role nationalism played in the disintegration of the
war-weakened Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires or, more
recently, in the disintegration of the Soviet Union as it began a
process of democratization that allowed a free rein to previously
repressed nationalisms.
Like other ideologies, nationalism offers an interpretation of
the historical and contemporary reality in which a nation finds itself,
a critique of that reality together with a conceptualization of an ideal
or preferred reality as a goal to be striven for, and a plan or set of
guidelines for reaching that goal. In effect, nationalism can be used
to mobilize people for political action by cultivating or even creating,
through propaganda and education, a national consciousness based
on myths of common identity and differentiation from others. Most
often these myths are defined in terms of a heroic, glorious, or
otherwise romanticized past or a conception of a threat to the
existence of the nation.
Because nationalism is an ideology that acquires its specific
content from the particular grievances, fears, and ambitions of a
nation—from the political context or social and economic
circumstances within which it arises—it assumes various forms and
plays different roles in the history of a given people or nation. These
manifestations of nationalism may be grouped in six categories:
anticolonial, secessionist, unifying, integrationist, irredentist, and
exclusive. These categories are not mutually exclusive—Northern
Ireland, for example, represents a case of both unifying (with the
Republic of Ireland) and secessionist (from Britain) nationalism—
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but the categories are sufficiently distinct to merit separate
description of their dominant characteristics.
Nationalism in the form of anti-colonialism has been linked
primarily to Asian and African independence movements. Economic
exploitation of the Third World by Western colonial powers has been
a major theme of anti-colonial rhetoric. The more radical of the
arguments, ideologically based on a Marxist-Leninist analysis, have
sought to explain the poverty of the Third World as a result of
deliberate colonial policies of exploitation and suppression of
commercial and industrial development—policies that are held to
account for the economic wealth of the West. Within the first three
decades after World War II, nearly 50 African and more than 30
Asian states became independent as Britain, France, the Netherlands,
and later Spain and Portugal lost their colonial empires. Until
recently, this process of decolonization had been considered part of
the last phase in the history of nationalism, but a revival of
nationalist movements occurred as the Soviet Union began the
process of economic and political reform in the mid-1980s. Among
the last to regain independence from an imperial power were the
three Baltic republics, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which had
been annexed by the Soviet Union in the course of World War II but
not integrated into the regime's centers of power.
A second (and the most prevalent) manifestation of
nationalism in the last decade of the 20th century takes the form of
demands for secession from or autonomy within a state. In the 1990s
more than a dozen nationalities were seeking independence or
autonomy in the republics of the former Soviet Union. There were a
half-dozen such movements in Europe and North America, including
the Irish in Northern Ireland and the Basques in Spain and France;
several in the Middle East; nearly a dozen in Africa; and almost two
dozen in Asia. Some multinational states, notably China, Iraq, India,
Indonesia, and the Russian Federation, have been confronted with
several such movements at once. Many of these movements have
been engaged in decades-long violent struggles that have cost
hundreds and even thousands of lives.
The goal of a third category of nationalist movements is to
unite a people that live in areas within the borders of two or more
states either by establishing a unified nation-state or by joining a
neighboring state of a kindred nationality. The Kurds, who are
seeking to establish an independent Kurdish state, straddle the
borders of five states: Syria, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Azerbaijan. The
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Basques, who are separated by the French-Spanish border, are an
example of a European people seeking a unified state. Aside from
these, most other divided people live in the republics of the former
Soviet Union, including Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, and the Russian Federation. Prolonged armed conflict or
terrorism has been a part of several of these nationalist campaigns.
Integration.
A fourth category of nationalism manifests itself when there
is a dispersed minority within one or more states that seeks
reintegration in its former homeland. The Volga Germans and
Crimean Tatars are two examples of minorities that were forcibly
deported. The Germans were moved from their autonomous Volga
republic to Kazakhstan and other regions of Central Asia following
Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941; the Tatars were
deported from the Crimea in 1944 and dispersed throughout the
Soviet Union. Both seek to reclaim their homeland and establish
autonomous republics. As a nationalist movement claiming Palestine
as a Jewish homeland for a people in worldwide diaspora, Zionism is
the best-known case of this form of nationalism.
Territorial claims on other states on the basis that the areas in
question are inhabited by a kindred people or were inhabited or
controlled by them in the past, however remote, is another related,
but distinct, manifestation of nationalism. Serbian claims to
territories of the mid-14th-century Nemanjid dynasty, the era of the
greatest Serbian imperial expansion, are one example of this form of
nationalism. Israeli claims to territory inhabited for generations by
Palestinians on the grounds of Jewish habitation in biblical times are
another example of such irredentist claims—a word derived from the
19th-century Italian effort to “redeem” or free areas with historic
links to Rome that were under foreign control.
Finally, nationalism may manifest itself as a claim to
national exclusiveness. As policy, it has been practiced throughout
history in the form of expulsion or massacre of religious or ethnic
minorities. For centuries, Jews and Gypsies, two dispersed ethnic
minorities, were subject to more or less violent expulsion from many
European countries, but the practice of what has become known as
ethnic cleansing assumed particular ferocity in the 20th century. The
Ottoman Turks annihilated more than a million Armenians in 1915
and tens of thousands of Greeks at Smyrna in 1922. In the name of
preserving “ethnic purity,” Nazi Germany expelled from territories
occupied by or incorporated into the Third Reich and ultimately
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killed more than five million Jews and hundreds of thousands of
Gypsies and other minorities. With the mass expulsions and killings
of Croats and Muslims by Serbs in Croatia and in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, of Serbs and Muslims by Croats, and, in fewer cases,
of the others by Muslims, as each tried to establish new or to
preserve existing ethnically homogeneous areas, the history of
nationalism in Europe has descended to its post war nadir.

Population
The term “population” refers to the inhabitants of a
designated territory. The science of population study is called
demography. Population scientists (demographers) concentrate on
three aspects of population: numbers, characteristics, and distribution
of persons within the territory they inhabit. The viewpoint of
demographers is not unlike that of biologists, who often speak of
“animal populations” or “plant populations” and who count the total
number of a particular class of organism, the numbers of each of
several species or types, and the numbers inhabiting each segment of
a territory.
Like the biologists, demographers tend to view a human
population as an aggregate of living creatures that somehow must
organize and adapt themselves to their environment in order to
provide food, clothing, and shelter and to attain material comforts
above the requirements for subsistence. If the human species is to
survive, its members must breed, care for their young, and train them
for survival during the period of immaturity. Yet reproduction must
not be “too successful.” As with other animal species it is possible
for man to overpopulate his environment, creating a shortage of food
and other necessities of life.
Demographic matters are high public interest because of
unprecedented large increases in the world population. The earth's
population doubled—from 2 billion to 4 billion—between 1930 and
1975, and would double again by about the year 2010 if the 1975
annual rate of increase, 1.9%, remained constant. A disproportionate
share of population growth is among nations that have been defined
as “developing.” These countries are least able to provide large
additions of youngsters with food, clothing, and education, and of
young adults with jobs, housing, and other consumer essentials,
while trying to break out of the vicious circle of poverty created by
technological backwardness.
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In many of these areas, rapid accumulation of population has
continued to a point where the nations are entering or already have
entered a phase of net food deficit without adequate compensating
industrial and commercial development. Such nations can avert
famine only if they are aided by the few remaining countries having
large food surpluses or if they embark upon extensive programs of
modernizing their agriculture and at the same time try to slow their
population growth.
Colourful expressions, such as “population explosion,”
“population bomb,” and “demographic doom,” are often used to
dramatize the immediacy and seriousness of the population crisis.
The gravity of this crisis, as a cause of impending mass misery, as a
threat to world peace, and as a major obstacle in the path of
worldwide efforts to raise levels of living, has been acknowledged by
large and influential national and international organizations. Most
nations that have critical population problems now have population
control programs. The United Nations has declared the population
crisis equal in importance to the problems of world peace and human
rights.

The System of Social and Political Life in

Democracies
There are a number of social sciences. These social sciences
cover different aspects of man’s activity. The mother science of all
these activities is called ‘Sociology’ which is the science of human
society as a whole. Society is made up of all social beings and their
variegated groupings. A social being performs numerous activities to
survive and flourish. These activities may be economic or political.
These may also be related to his moral actions.
The knowledge which relates to any of activities of human
beings is known as a social science.
The activities relating to statecraft are known as political
activities. The knowledge which covers various aspects (theoretical
or practical) of political activities is known as Political Science.
Political Science is a science because, like all other science,
it has its broad rules and regulations, general laws and general
principles. These rules, laws and principles are like the guidelines of
certain definite activities or actions.
Man is a Social Being: Since the earliest times, man is
known to have lived in society. Even when he was not so civilised,
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he lived in the company of his fellow beings whether his society
started with his family, tribe, group or a combination of them.
Plato said that society is essential for life while Aristotle
improved on this expression by saying that society is essential for
good life. Without society, it is impossible for humans to have the
basic necessities like food, clothing and shelter. Society was needed
even by the primitive people. Their dependence on society went on
gradually increasing with time so that, in due course, they gave up
their nomadic life and started living a family life.
Human Groups: Once man learned to live in effective
social groups he became superior to all beasts, but his dependence on
the uncontrolled bounty of nature limited his chances of survival.
Hunting wild animals and gathering wild vegetable foods could
support about one human being per 10 square miles of territory, and
even this small population was often threatened by droughts and
other natural disasters. The situation changed abruptly when groups
of men living in favoured parts of the earth entered a stage of
communal living. They made certain plants and animals, part of the
human groups, establishing a symbiotic relationship. That is, these
people became farmers and herdsmen.
Symbiosis with plants and animals gave social man a large
and dependable food supply and started him towards developing his
higher civilisation. But it placed new demands on cooperative effort
and required communities more highly organised than those of
hunters. The result was a diversity of human groupings. People
began to live in several different kinds of associations, each
characterised by behaviour patterns related to its size, to meet the
varied needs imposed by agriculture and, later, by industry. The
types of human communities now so familiar around the world
quickly evolved.
Human Settlements: Preparing fields, planting crops and
harvesting, called for a lot of heavy labour. While the crops were
growing they demanded protection and weeding and after harvesting
they had to be kept safe from thieves and pests. These requirements
led most farmers to live in settled groups in villages, and their
sedentary life raised a host of social problems. Various kinds of
property became important, and with property came inevitable
quarrels about ownership and inheritance. The village itself was a
tangle of difficulties. Who should be permitted to build his house and
where? And what to do about outsiders, who wanted to move in? All
such problems had to be solved reasonably well or the village would
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be rivn by strife and instability. With time villages developed into
towns. New township and larger cities were also established.
The knowledge relating to politics makes up one of the
social sciences like that of other social sciences – economics,
philosophy, psychology, etc. It is, however, not an exact science
because no science which deals with the behaviour of human beings
can be declared exact. A human beings and his mind are vast vistas
of differing thought. A human mind seldom has a single track to
follow. It is full of all complexities. That, however, does not mean
that the knowledge relating to political science should not be
classified as a science. It has all the logic, system and other
characteristics of the scientific study of specialised branch of human
knowledge and fully deserves the title of science.
Individual and Society: An individual and his/her society
are interdependent and essential for each other’s existence. The
problem that has haunted philosophers is whether the society has any
right to regulate an individual’s conduct and behaviour, or allow the
individual to have free expression and action. It has been rightly
observed that man is a social animal not only by nature but also by
sheer necessity, right from the day he sees the light of this world till
his death. Even before his birth an individual needs a society of
facilitate his healthy arrival and cordial welcome to the fold of
humanity.
Individual and the State: State is the most important
political institution of society that looks after the material and
spiritual interests of its individuals. Each nation-state today adopts
what is called a ‘constitution’ to regulate the behaviour and activity
of most of its nationals. Sometimes called the “basic law of society”,
the constitution describes the fundamental responsibilities of the
state in regard to the functioning of the society as a whole. It
establishes the form of government at the centre, in the regions,
districts and villages in the country for its governance. It also
prescribes the outlines of powers and privileges of different wings
(executive, legislature and judiciary) of the government together with
the mutual relationships among them. It enumerates the basic
objectives which govern the formulation of programmes of the state
for the good of its individual citizens. The constitutions also lays
down the basic rules to regulate the behaviour of individuals among
themselves and towards the state and society.
Obligations and Facilities of Citizenship: The basic law of
a society very often pouts limitations on the liberty of the citizens of
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the state and prevents them from harming the interests of other
individuals for elfish gain, either by exploitation, economic or social
or by material or physical injury.
In return for this restraint on his liberty, the state gives to the
individual numerous facilities of citizenship. These facilities include
the right to vote and elect political leaders at different levels, enjoy
the social benefits of corporate living like the amenities of cheap
drinking water, street sanitation, electricity, roads, public transport,
security of life, medical care etc., as well as the right to individual
belongings and working opportunity based on merit and capability.
In recent decades the state has further expanded its role in
society with a view to serve its citizens with more and more material
and spiritual benefits arising from mutual cooperation. This has
made the life of individuals, and thereby of societies, more
comfortable, interesting and purposeful.
Social Atomism: In recent societies, the idea of social
atomism has come up. According to Atomists, a social atom is an
indivisible unit of society and the whole society is made up of such
social atoms or living units. The social atom is essential for the
whole society and the society is essential for the very existence of its
social atoms.
Political science is fundamentally linked to the stage of
social evolution or revolution of a community, or a nation-state. It is
also linked to a territorial region and/or how it fits in the world as a
whole. What activities of a man constitute political action? In what
way and to what extent does the political action exercise its influence
on the life of a person or a body of persons in an area or a region?
The answers to these questions depend upon the stage of socio-
economic progress the community has reached, its cultural
background and current social objectives.
Thus, it may be observed, that political institutions of a
community or a state derive their origin and source of development
from its historical or traditional background. They are based on the
forces of change – social, economic, and political – that functioned
in the past, are functioning today, or will function in the future.

Mafia
The mafia had its origin as a secret society fighting foreign
rule in Sicily in the 15th century. In 1868 when Sicily became an
integral part of Italy the mafia continued to operate with the time-
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honoured methods of organised violence but discovered new goals,
new purposes and new causes. It continued to challenge to
established governments.
Mafia, name for an open-ended association of criminal
groups, sometimes bound by a blood oath and sworn to secrecy. The
Mafia first developed in Sicily in feudal times to protect the estates
of absentee landlords. By the 19th century it had become a network
of criminal bands that dominated the Sicilian countryside. The
members were bound by omertà, a rigid code of conduct that
included avoiding all contact and cooperation with the authorities.
The Mafia had neither a centralized organization nor a hierarchy; it
consisted of many small groups, each autonomous within its own
district. By employing terrorist methods against the peasant
electorate, the Mafia attained political office in several communities,
thus acquiring influence with the police and obtaining legal access to
weapons.
The Fascist government of Benito Mussolini succeeded for
a time in suppressing the Mafia, but the organization emerged again
after World War II. Over the next 30 years the Mafia became a
power not only in Sicily but all over Italy as well. The Italian
government began an anti-Mafia campaign in the early 1980s,
leading not only to a number of arrests and sensational trials, but also
to the assassination of several key law-enforcement officials in
retaliation. Public outrage was tempered by the arrest in 1993 of the
reputed Mafia leader, Salvatore Riina.
Beginning in the late 19th century, some members of the
Mafia emigrated to the United States. They soon became entrenched
in American organized crime, especially in the 1920s during
Prohibition. After the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 put an end to
most bootlegging, the Mafia moved into other areas, such as
gambling, protection, prostitution, and, in recent years, illicit drugs.
Links with the Italian Mafia were also maintained. As in Italy,
prosecution of reputed Mafia leaders in the United States increased
in the 1980s and 1990s.
Until the 19th century, the Sicilian word “mafia” did not
appear in Italian writings. In the mid-19th century, Sicilian-Italian
dictionaries offered different definitions of the term. One dictionary
(1868) said that “mafia” expressed bravado and dignity (“what a
mafioso horse!”), but another (1876) said “mafia” was the equivalent
of “gang” (camorra).
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These definitions reflect the alternative, but related, senses in
which the word was, and is, employed in Sicily. In The Italians
(1964), Luigi Barzini says that the word should be spelled with a
lowercase “m” when it means a state of mind—admiration for manly
bravado. When the word is capitalized, it has a more specialized
meaning and is the name of a world-famous illegal organization.
The Sicilian Mafia never was a tightly knit bureaucracy.
Instead, it always has been an alliance of many small,
semiautonomous groups, each active only in a limited district and
each concerned only with specific occupations, services, or
commodities. While the alliance of semiautonomous groups
ordinarily is called “The Mafia,” in contemporary western Sicily
there are construction trades Mafie, public works Mafie, wholesale
fruit and vegetable Mafie, fishing fleet Mafie, and many others. The
crime common to each of these Mafie is extortion. If a bricklayer
does not pay a fee to a Mafia group, for example, his scaffolding is
likely to fall.
The Sicilian association originated in a peasant society,
where face-to-face relations between neighbors predominated. The
early Mafie provided law and order where the various official
governments occupying Sicily did not. They collected taxes, which
were payments for protection against bandits. They tended to be kin
groups, with a hierarchy of authority relevant only to family affairs
—the patriarch and his heirs.
The kinship groups adapted their organization and operation,
however, to meet changing conditions as Sicily became more
industrialized and urbanized. By the beginning of the 20th century,
each group had a designated chief and a concept of membership that
permitted “men of honor” in the group even if they were not
relatives. The demarcations between taxation and extortion, and
between peacekeeping and murder, became blurred. Gradually the
Mafia groups formed alliances that enabled them, collectively, to
dominate almost all aspects of life—economic, political, religious,
and social—in the western part of Sicily.
Near the end of the period of national Prohibition, in the
early 1930s, the basic structure of current American organized crime
was established as the final product of a series of “gangland wars.”
In these armed conflicts, an alliance of Italians and Sicilians first
conquered bootlegging gangs dominated by members of other ethnic
groups. Then, in a series of battles in 1930 and 1931, the same
Italians and Sicilians almost destroyed one another. The device used
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to bring this “Castellamarese War” to a close set the pattern for
organized crime in America. Basically, the agreement was to divide
the nation into 20 or 30 territories, each with a semi-independent
“boss,” or capo. This arrangement for peaceful coexistence was
patterned on that of the Sicilian Mafia. It continues, with
modifications.
The 1931 “peace treaty” functioned to create a loose alliance
between the various Mafia groups that have operated in American
cities ever since. Members of this alliance have profited because
many Americans demand the illegal goods and services they offer
for sale. They have managed to secure control of a large part of the
illegal gambling in the United States. They have become identified
as loan sharks and as importers and wholesalers of narcotics. They
have infiltrated certain labour unions, where they extort money from
employers and, at the same time, cheat the members of the union.
Mafia members own a wide variety of legitimate retail firms,
restaurants and bars, hotels, trucking companies, food companies,
and other corporations. They also have corrupted some government
officials at the local, state, and federal levels.
The American alliance is thought to consist of at least 24
“families,” as the membership groups are called. All members of
these families are Italians or Sicilians, or of Italian-Sicilian descent.
The persons occupying key positions in the skeletal structure of each
“family”—boss, underboss, counsellor, captains, and soldiers—are
well known to law-enforcement agencies. Names of persons who
permanently or temporarily occupy other positions—buffers, money
movers, enforcers, and executioners—also are well known. The
“families” are linked to each other, and to associated syndicates,
through understandings and agreements and through mutual
deference to a “commission” that is made up of the leaders of the
most powerful “families.”
The Federal Bureau of Narcotics started calling this
American alliance “The Mafia” in the early 1930s, and news media
and some local law-enforcement agencies still use this name. The
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) used the name “Cosa Nostra”
(“our affair”) until 1970, when the U.S. Department of Justice
dropped both the names Mafia and Cosa Nostra from official use.
Organized criminals on the eastern seaboard use the term Cosa
Nostra, but it is seldom heard in Chicago or the West, where
members may call themselves “The Syndicate,” “The Outfit,” or
“The Organization.” “The Mob” occasionally has been used by
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journalists as well as by some criminals themselves to refer to all
organized criminals, whether or not they are members of the Italian-
Sicilian alliance.

Forms of Violence in a Community

All states have an international legal obligation to
investigate, prosecute and punish rapists. State discrimination is not
pursuing cases involving violence against women has been
documented by some groups. This non-prosecution is a serious issue
and can only be overcome by raising awareness among the police,
the judiciary and general community. The police are often insensitive
to issues concerning rape. They are often suspicious of complaints,
particularly if there is no sign of injury, if the woman knows the
offender, if she delays reporting the rape or if she appears
unnaturally calm or unemotional. If the woman is seen as being
morally dubious, as who will be if she is living with her boyfriend, is
sexually experienced or is a prostitute, the allegation will completely
in doubt. Police stations are the traditional rape reception agencies
and the police response to complaints requires priority attention.
Education and training are essential for prejudice and
negative attitudes to be eliminated and practical approaches to a
complaint imparted. In Malaysia, women-only rape squads have
been formed by the police and a policy directive established that only
women police officers handle rape victims. In the United Kingdom,
police have developed “rape suits”. These are specially designed
interview rooms, equipped with a bathroom and examination couch.
The victim is interviewed and examined in the ‘suite’, which is
separate from the main station interviewing area. In Brazil there are
women-only police stations which deal with the problem of violence
against women.
Service: Many countries have established what are
sometimes called “rape crisis centres”. Some of these operate a
telephone advice service or a short-term residential facility for
victims. Most provide sympathetic and knowledgeable support to
victims. These rape crisis centres provide her with legal and
counselling services and work closely with hospitals, the police
station and the prosecutor’s office. They are basically intended to
give the victim courage to face the difficult and often embarrassing
procedures that the legal process requires. These centres are
augmented by non-governmental organisations and government
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services, which include information, networks, hotlines and
counselling services.
Legislation: The criminal laws which exist with regard to
rape also pose certain problems. In most cases rape is defined as
sexual intercourse with a woman, against her will and without her
consent. Questions emerge as to what is “sexual intercourse”, what is
“consent” and what are the relevant rules of evidence which should
govern a case concerning rape.
Sexual Intercourse: Most Jurisdictions consider sexual
intercourse for the purpose of rape to exist only where there is penile
penetration of vagina. However, frequently, the offender is unable or
chooses not to penetrate his victim in this manner, but may force her
to perform other acts or demean her in other ways. A number of
jurisdictions, especially in the Commonwealth, have thus taken the
view that this concentration on penile penetration is misplaced.
These jurisdictions which have redefined rape to include acts beyond
penile penetration seek to stress the demeaning and violent aspects of
rape, rather than its sexual nature.
Sexual assault within Marriage: In many countries sexual
assault by a husband on his own wife is not regarded as unlawful
sexual intercourse and thus is not a crime. This is based on the
assumption that the wife gives herself up to the husband by entering
into the contract of marriage. Some jurisdictions have, however,
done away with this marital immunity.
The Complaint’s Consent: In most countries, rape is
defined by statue or by common law as sexual intercourse without
the consent of or against the will of the victim. Research from all
jurisdictions indicates that any woman who has to prove that she did
not consent will face enormous difficulty unless she shows signs of
fairly serious injury. She still face particular difficulty if she knows
or has had a sexual relationship with the man in the past. Thus a
number of jurisdictions have attempted to shift the emphasis of the
crime away from her consent.
The crime of rape, by legal definition, also includes sexual
intercourse with any person under a specified age. The age varies
from 12 to 18 in different parts of the world. Sexual intercourse with
a person who is mentally deficient or disordered or under the
influence of drugs also constitutes rape. The consent of such a person
is irrelevant. These forms of rape constitute what is sometimes called
statutory rape in the United States. Under British law they are
labelled “unlawful carnal knowledge.
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Most take as their inspiration the Michigan Criminal Sexual
Conduct Act which eliminated consent as an element of the crime,
focusing on the conduct of the offender, rather than the consent of
the victim. Thus, “criminal sexual conduct” is committed when
sexual intercourse occurs where the accused uses force or coercion
or in circumstances where the victim is deemed to be incapable of
giving consent, with force or coercion receiving a wide statutory
definition.
Related to this concept of consent is the question of whether
the consent which is grudging or elicited following substantial
pressure being applied should be inoperative. It would appear
appropriate that consent be vitiated where it is gained by the
imposition of the other person’s position of authority over or
professional or other trusting relation to the victim.
Some jurisdictions have introduced the crime of “inducing
sexual connection by coercion,” which occurs where sexual activity
takes place when the offender knows that the complainant consents
because of the offender’s position of power. Similarly, other provide
that where consent to threat”, defined as intimidatory or coercive
conduct or other threat, not involving a threat of physical force, in
circumstances where the victim should not reasonably be expected to
resist the threat and where the offender is aware that submission is
liable to six years’ imprisonment.

Capital Punishment
Capital Punishment, legal infliction of the death penalty; in
modern law, corporal punishment in its most severe form. Lynching,
in contrast to capital punishment, is the unauthorized, illegal use of
death as a punishment. The usual alternative to the death penalty is
long-term or life imprisonment.
The earliest historical records contain evidence of capital
punishment. It was mentioned in the Code of Hammurabi (1750 BC).
In England, Sexsex during the reigns of King Canute and William
the Conqueror, the death penalty was not used, although the results
of interrogation and torture were often fatal. By the end of the 15th
century, English law recognized seven major crimes: treason (grand
and petty), murder, larceny, burglary, rape, and arson. By 1800, more
than 200 capital crimes were recognized, and, as a result, 1,000 or
more people were sentenced to death each year (although most
sentences were commuted by royal pardon). In the American
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colonies before the War of Independence, the death penalty was
commonly authorized for a wide variety of crimes. Blacks, whether
slave or free, were threatened with death for many crimes that were
punished less severely when committed by whites.
Efforts to abolish the death penalty did not gather
momentum until the end of the 18th century; in Britain and the
United States this reform was led by the Quakers (Society of
Friends). In Europe, a short treatise, On Crimes and Punishments
(1764), by the Italian jurist Cesare Beccaria, inspired influential
thinkers such as the French philosopher Voltaire to oppose torture,
flogging, and the death penalty. Encouraged by the writings of the
philosopher Jeremy Bentham, Britain repealed all but a few of its
capital statutes during the 19th century. Several states in the United
States (led by Michigan in 1847) and a few countries (beginning with
Venezuela in 1853 and Portugal in 1867) abolished the death penalty
entirely.
Where complete abolition could not be achieved, reformers
concentrated on limiting the scope and mitigating the harshness of
the death penalty. However, the reform movement succeeded in
Britain in 1965 after a number of dubious and even manifestly wrong
executions, carried out by hanging, in the previous two decades. In
one case a posthumous pardon was issued. Since then there have
been regular and determined attempts to restore the death penalty,
but they have been rejected in Parliament. A series of miscarriages of
justice in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s in what would have been
capital crimes emphasized the dangers of executing the innocent and
made the return of the death penalty unlikely. It remains the
theoretical punishment for a very few offences such as piracy.
The death penalty has been inflicted in many ways now
regarded as barbaric and forbidden by law almost everywhere:
crucifixion, boiling in oil, drawing and quartering, impalement,
beheading, burning alive, crushing, tearing asunder, stoning, and
drowning are examples.
In the United States, the death penalty is currently authorized
in one of five ways: hanging (the traditional method of execution
throughout the English-speaking world), electrocution (introduced by
New York State in 1890), the gas chamber (adopted in Nevada in
1923), firing squad (used only in Utah), or lethal injection
(introduced in 1977 by Oklahoma). In most nations that still retain
the death penalty for some crimes, hanging or the firing squad are the
preferred methods of execution. In some countries that adhere
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strictly to the traditional practices of Islam, beheading or stoning are
still occasionally employed as punishment.
The fundamental questions raised by the death penalty are
whether it is an effective deterrent to violent crime, and whether it is
more effective than the alternative of long-term imprisonment.
Defenders of the death penalty insist that because taking an
offender's life is a more severe punishment than any prison term, it
must be a better deterrent. Supporters also argue that without capital
punishment there is no adequate deterrent for those already serving a
life term who commit murder while incarcerated, or for those who
have not yet been caught but who would be liable to a life term if
arrested, as well as for revolutionaries, terrorists, traitors, and spies.
Those who argue against the death penalty as a deterrent to
crime in the United States cite the following: adjacent states, in
which one has a death penalty and the other does not, show no
significant long-term differences in the murder rate; states that use
the death penalty seem to have a higher number of homicides than
states that do not use it; states that abolish and then reintroduce the
death penalty do not seem to show any significant change in the
murder rate; no change in the rate of homicides in a given city or
state seems to occur following a local execution.
In the early 1970s, some published reports purported to show
that each execution in the United States deterred eight or more
homicides, but subsequent research has discredited this finding. The
current prevailing view among criminologists is that no conclusive
evidence exists to show that the death penalty is a more effective
deterrent to violent crime than long-term imprisonment.
The classic moral arguments in favour of the death penalty
have been biblical and retributive. "Whosoever sheds man's blood,
by man shall his blood be shed" (Genesis 9:6) has usually been
interpreted as a divine warrant for putting the murderer to death. "Let
the punishment fit the crime" is its secular counterpart. Both maxims
imply that the murderer deserves to die. Proponents of capital
punishment have also claimed that society has the right to kill in
defence of its members, just as the individual may kill in self-
defence. The analogy to self-defence, however, is somewhat
doubtful, as long as the effectiveness of the death penalty as a
deterrent to violent crimes has not been proved.
Critics of the death penalty have always pointed to the risk
of executing the innocent, although definitely established cases of
this sort in recent years are rare. They have also argued that one can
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accept a retributive theory of punishment without necessarily
resorting to the death penalty; proportioning the severity of
punishment to the gravity of the crime does not require the primitive
rule of "a life for a life".
In the United States, the chief objection to capital
punishment has been that it was always used unfairly, in at least
three major ways: that is, with regard to race, sex, and social status.
Women, for example, are rarely sentenced to death and executed,
even though 20 per cent of all homicides in the United States in
recent years have been committed by women. Defenders of the death
penalty, however, have insisted that, because nothing inherent in the
laws of capital punishment causes sexist, racist, or class bias in its
use, these kinds of discrimination are not a sufficient reason for
abolishing the death penalty. Opponents have replied that the death
penalty is inherently subject to caprice and mistake in practice and
that it is impossible to administer fairly.
In many countries the death penalty is inflicted for a range of
crimes against people, property, public order, and the state, as, for
example, in some African, Middle Eastern (Arab), and Asian nations.
About a dozen European countries have carried out executions since
the 1970s. By the late 1980s, some Western nations had no capital
punishment, while others had abolished it except for military or
national security offences.
Capital punishment was reviewed by the Supreme Court of
the United States in the 1970s, making it unconstitutional to impose
the death penalty in certain circumstances, for example, for a crime
that does not take or threaten life. However, many court decisions of
the 1980s and early 1990s have lowered bars to executions. In
addition, in the early 1990s the trend of Supreme Court rulings was
to cut back on the appeals that death row inmates could make to the
federal courts. During a visit to Mexico and the United States in
January 1999, Pope John Paul II made some of his strongest
denunciations of capital punishment to date, calling the death penalty
"cruel and unnecessary". After he made a direct request on behalf of
a death-row inmate, the state governor of Missouri, where the pope
was speaking, granted clemency. Capital punishment experts and
religious officials described the successful intervention as an
unprecedented act of papal influence.
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Budget
The process of making decisions about raising revenues and
spending money for public purposes. The budget lies at the very core
of a government's decision-making process. It is the task of deciding
what share of a society's resources ought to be devoted to public
purposes and how much ought to be left in private hands. For
politicians, budgeting centers on deciding how to raise revenues and
on what programs to spend the money. It is a virtual lightning rod for
political conflict.
In most countries government budgeting is executive
centered. The president or prime minister prepares estimates of the
revenues and expenditures required for the government's programs.
In democracies these estimates are typically submitted as proposals
to the legislature for its approval. Governments prepare their budgets
for a fiscal year—that is, a budget year—which rarely coincides with
the calendar year. The U.S. government's fiscal year begins on
October 1 and ends the following September 30. In most state and
many local governments, the fiscal year runs from July 1 through
June 30. The fiscal year is numbered by the year in which it ends;
thus the federal budget year ending on Sept. 30, 1995, for example,
is known as fiscal year 1995.
In a given fiscal year, when a government's revenues equal
its expenditures, the government budget is said to be “in balance.” If
revenues exceed expenditures, the budget is “in surplus.” If
expenditures exceed revenues, the budget is “in deficit.” A budget
deficit is therefore a snapshot of a government's financial condition
in a given fiscal year. The accumulated deficits of all previous fiscal
years is the government's debt. Governments finance their debt
through borrowing—from their own citizens, from banks, and from
investors abroad. Borrowed funds are repaid with interest; these
payments usually have first call on the government's revenues and
must be made if the government is to remain solvent and
creditworthy. Because virtually all governments have a debt,
financing the debt is a central ongoing part of the budget process.
The government budget both affects and is affected by the
economy. Surpluses in the budgets of nations tend to slow their
economic growth by withdrawing wealth from the private sector.
Deficits tend to fuel economic growth by pumping money into the
private sector. One of the most important decisions of national
budget makers thus is their calculation of the effect of their budget
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on the economy. Given the persistently high deficits with which most
major countries have struggled—and their inability to bring them
under control—national budgets have become far less useful tools
for steering the economy. Instead, the decisions of central banks,
which make national monetary policy—managing the supply of
currency and the level of interest rates—have become much more
important in guiding the economy.
The economy, in turn, has a profound effect on government
budgets. Higher economic growth is likely to reduce government
deficits by increasing revenues faster than spending; lower economic
growth tends to increase the deficit by driving up spending for
unemployment, income security, and government health care. High
inflation is likely to increase government deficits, especially because
interest costs on the debt tend to increase at the same time.
Moreover, governments are indexing more expenditures to the level
of inflation so that service recipients keep even with the cost of
living. This has tied government spending even more closely to the
economy's performance.
One of the first steps in preparing a government budget,
therefore, is to forecast economic growth and inflation and to project
what effects they will have on government revenues and
expenditures. Since even small errors in economic forecasts can
produce large errors in estimating the budget, there is a high
premium on accurate forecasting. Because these forecasts have to be
prepared more than a year in advance of the end of the fiscal year,
and because economic forecasting is more art than science,
unexpected changes in the economy can easily disrupt a
government's economic plans.
The national budget also expresses the government's fiscal
policy. Governments are faced with numerous, often conflicting,
objectives: promoting maximum employment, fighting inflation, and
pursuing economic stability and growth. To assist in achieving these
objectives, the government may decide to stimulate the economy by
operating with a budget deficit. If inflationary pressures persist, the
government may choose to reduce the deficit, bring the budget into
balance, or produce a budget surplus to restrain the economy. To be
effective, fiscal policy must accord with monetary policy decisions
of the central bank.
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Nuclear Proliferation
Or
Non-Nuclear Proliferation
Nuclear Warfare and Nuclear Proliferation, dissemination
and use of nuclear weapons and military nuclear technology. The
first use of nuclear weapons in war took place in August 1945, when
the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
in Japan. Atomic or fission bombs involve a self-sustaining atom-
splitting chain reaction in a mass of uranium or plutonium, causing
the release of a huge amount of energy in a very short time. Atom
bomb design and construction is very precise, but it is now widely
accepted that a competent nuclear physicist could glean all the
information needed from readily available scientific literature. Most
modern nuclear weapons are scientifically more advanced and
belong in the second category of hydrogen or thermonuclear
weapons. These weapons employ a fission explosion to create
sufficient energy for the hydrogen fusion process to take place. There
is then a massive release of energy, much larger than that from an
atomic bomb. There is theoretically no limit to the size of a
thermonuclear explosion.
From the moment nuclear weapon technology was revealed
in 1945, it has been widely, though not universally, understood that
these are not "weapons" in the traditional sense of conferring a viable
military advantage on the possessor. When the use of nuclear
weapons threatened to annihilate not just the belligerents in any
conflict, but also to destroy and contaminate much of the Earth's
surface, it seemed that weapons development had finally gone
beyond the bounds of proportionality and utility. The British
strategist Basil Henry Liddell Hart commented that "with the advent
of atomic weapons, we have come either to the last page of war or
the last page of history".
A nuclear weapon involves a delivery system as well as the
bomb or warhead. The first delivery system was the long-range
bomber. As the Cold War progressed, so a wide variety of delivery
systems were developed: missiles of various ranges launched from
the air, ground, and sea; battlefield artillery; shipborne depth charges
and torpedoes; and landmines. Nuclear weapon technology is now so
diffuse that an effective means of delivery could be as simple as the
boot of a car or the proverbial "suitcase bomb". The yield or
explosive force of nuclear weapons has also increased dramatically.
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The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs had a yield of about 13
kilotons-equivalent to 13,000 tonnes of TNT explosive. The yield of
some US and Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) was
in the region of 1.5 megatons, or 1,500,000 tonnes of TNT. In 1962
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics exploded a thermonuclear
bomb with a staggering yield of 58 megatons. Nuclear weapons have
also become extremely accurate: the "circular error probable" of a
US MX missile is just 100 metres, meaning that there is a 50 per cent
chance of the 11,000-kilometre-range missile delivering a warhead
within 100 m of the target.
The first effects of a nuclear explosion are an extremely
bright and hot wave of thermal radiation, and a massive blast,
resulting in widespread destruction and fires. A series of
electromagnetic pulses (EMP) are also released which, while not
damaging to humans or buildings, could destroy communications
systems. Nuclear radiation, extremely harmful to all forms of life,
comes in the form of direct radiation at the time of the explosion, and
radiation from radioactive fallout, the dirt and debris sucked up and
irradiated during the explosion and falling back to Earth. It is
possible to design weapons which augment one or other effect.
Weapons designed to be used against military units might produce a
high EMP in order to break down the military communications
network. The best known special design was the so-called "neutron
bomb", or enhanced radiation/reduced blast bomb, which maximized
lethal direct radiation to kill tank crews but which kept the blast
effect to a minimum.
The United States had the monopoly in atomic bombs from
1945 until the first Soviet test in 1949. The US tested a
thermonuclear bomb in 1952, and the Soviet Union followed suit one
year later. In 1957 the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite into the
first global orbit, prompting US fears of a "missile gap". Both sides
then raced to produce bombers, missiles, and other means of
delivery. By the end of the Cold War, each had well over 10,000
strategic (i.e. intercontinental) warheads, with many more in the sub-
strategic range. Other acknowledged possessors of nuclear weapons
are Britain, China, and France. Several states, such as Israel and,
until recently, South Africa, are widely suspected of possessing
nuclear weapons. Other suspected "threshold" states, those thought to
be capable of developing nuclear weapons, include Iran, North
Korea, India, and Pakistan. The dismantling of Iraq's nuclear
weapons programme after the Gulf War revealed it to be well on the
way to developing a nuclear device.
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The "proliferation", or spread of nuclear weapons has taken
place in two ways, "vertical" and "horizontal". Vertical proliferation
is the expansion and development of existing arsenals, and is
controlled through arms control agreements between the possessors.
The prevention of horizontal proliferation is the object of the nuclear
non-proliferation regime. The regime has several elements, including
national and multilateral export controls, inspection and verification
agencies, bans on weapon testing, and, most recently, an attempt to
prohibit further production of fissile material.
The key to the regime is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT) signed in 1968. In essence, the NPT is a bargain in
which non-nuclear states agree to renounce weapons-related
research, development, and acquisition in exchange for access to
civil nuclear technology. Non-signatories, however, include Israel,
India, and Pakistan: three almost certainly nuclear-armed states that
have fought several wars in recent history. North Korea's threat to
withdraw from the NPT in 1993, to avoid opening its nuclear
facilities to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), brought the counter-threat of a pre-emptive strike on the
facilities by US bombers. The NPT, now with over 170 signatories,
was in 1995 the subject of a major international review conference to
meet its official expiry in May. The major powers possessing nuclear
weapons, with permanent seats on the United Nations Security
Council, secured indefinite continuation of the NPT regime by,
amongst other proposed policies, promising concerted retaliation
against any state guilty of nuclear attack or threats against an NPT
signatory.
Many states criticize the NPT as discriminatory, and
demand that the nuclear "haves" do more to meet their part of the
bargain by working more conscientiously towards nuclear
disarmament and complete test bans. The non-proliferation regime
faces several other challenges. There is a fundamental difficulty in
distinguishing between civil and military use of nuclear technology,
and it seems increasingly difficult to control the traffic in key
components and materials. It may also be that the taboo against the
viewing of nuclear weapons as acceptable weapons of war has been
eroded in various parts of the world. And it is not beyond the realms
of possibility that a terrorist organization might eventually acquire
and use its own bomb.
In an important benchmark decision, the International Court
of Justice of the United Nations ruled in July 1996 that the use of
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nuclear weapons in warfare was contrary to the rules of war, except
in "extreme circumstances". A ruling was initially requested in
December 1994 by a large majority vote of the UN General
Assembly, reflecting the concern of the non-nuclear majority at the
possession of nuclear weapons by the "nuclear club" of permanent
UN Security Council members. The decision rendered the use of
tactical or theatre nuclear weapons illegal in any circumstances.
Without an effective mechanism for enforcement, the decision is
significant chiefly as a moral precedent.

Hazards of Industrial Pollution and Demand for

Clean Technologies
Much of the development being made is based on the use of
increasing amount of raw materials, energy, chemicals synthetics.
The scale and complexity of our requirement for these resources
have increased greatly with the rising level of population and
production. Indiscriminate industrial expansion to cater the growing
needs, without much attention being paid to its black-lash created in
its wake, pollution and subsequently environmental degradation.
Notwithstanding the role of chemicals in improved health and life
expectancy, increased agricultural production, enhanced economic
opportunities and the quality of life in general, the products and
residues of the chemical industry pose unprecedented risks to human
health and environmental quality. The Pakistani scenario of chemical
industries sector looks grim with the industrialists often going in for
outdated low efficiency processes and technologies associated with
higher level of pollution. Pesticides like DDT, BHC, etc. which were
banned or obsolete in industrialised countries are still being produced
in the country. Liquid waste that runs into a stream from a factory
can kill wildlife and cause health problems for humans. In the United
Kingdom the amount and quality of wastewater a factory can
discharge is strictly regulated. There are cases like the H-acid plants,
which find themselves under considerable economic and
environmental pressure in developed nations that have been installed
in Pakistan. Increased use of chemicals in industry and agriculture
and toxic and hazardous substances into the human food chain and
into soil, water regimes, forests and ultimately in the environment.
While talking of the environment, we must realise that
global environment is an interconnected web. The links among the
natural systems of air, water and the living biota are often global.
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Disturbing any one of them can have unexpected results that are
remote in both space and time.
The human race relies on the environment and therefore
must manage it wisely. The prosperity of nation’s and individuals
depends upon the quality of the environment and the availability of
natural resources. Yet it is principally human activities that degrade
the global environment and deplete the world’s natural resource
base.
Every environmental problem has got short-term as well as
long term impact. During the course of rapid industrialisation, we
often neglect the long term impact mainly due to inadequate
knowledge. The use of chemicals, such as CFCs and DDT are few
examples in this regard. Another example of overlooking the long-
term effects of pollution is being manifested in the form of acid rain,
mainly in the industrialised countries of Europe. It is a well-known
fact that most of the European coal is rich in sulphur content. As a
result, high sulphur dioxide emission takes place during coal
burning. To avoid its build-up in the proximity of human
environment, tall stacks were designed. No doubt, these stacks were
able to avoid the emission of this gas on the surface level, but the gas
that went up high in the atmosphere formed acid droplets after
reacting with the moisture there. Now, its impact is pathetic, as more
than two-third of the European forests are being categorised as
degraded and most of the lakes are slightly acidic.
Environment protection today is evolving and incorporating
a whole new strategy to try to avoid the waste and pollution that has
all too often characterised rapid industrialisation. If you go deep into
the theme of cleaner production, it is basically efficiency that counts.
Applying cleaner production means systematically addressing all
phases of the production process and product life-cycle. Cleaner
production encompasses energy and raw material conservation,
reduction in the use of toxic substances and product and process
changes that reduce the wastes and pollutants previously produced.
All these options have the same aim, to reduce the risks to humans
and the environment from industrial activities and consumption, and
to do so in the most cost-effective way possible.
Unfortunately, cleaner production cannot always eliminate
the generation of all wastes and emissions. Thus to protect the
environment, a new complementary prevention and control approach
is required, with the constant aim of reducing risk. In this new
hierarchy, the first option is cleaner production. The second option is
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to find ways to recycle the wastes and pollutants that still exist back
into the production system. The third option is to select an
appropriate and environmentally sound treatment system that
destroys the hazardous characteristic of the material. The fourth and
last option is to restore what still remains in safest possible way.
Unfortunately, the preventive part, which is gaining
momentum these days, was overlooked when thought of protecting
the environment first emerged a few decades ago. Only the control
methods, end-of-pipe (EOP) devices, were devised to solve the
problems of polluted surface waters, intoxicated air and other results
of industrial developments. EOP wastes, although less hazardous
than the raw wastes, were in turn emitted to air, waterways and soil
without any due consideration. Little thought was given to correcting
the root cause, processes and products themselves. As a result, even
after treatment systems were adopted by most of the industries, the
environment continued to get more and more polluted.
Nowadays, there is a great hunt for clean technologies in
every sector of industry, and whenever an economically viable and
suitable technology is evolved, most of the industries take keen
interest in that technology. Recycling of condensate water in sugar
industries, bio-methanation in distillery industry, caustic recovery in
large pulp and paper mills and fibre recovery in small pulp and paper
industry are the few technologies, which gained popularity in the
recent past and ultimately reduced the burden on environment.
Some other sectors of industries are being persuaded to
adopt relatively clean technologies. The use of beneficiated by the
thermal power plants may reduce a great amount of air pollutants and
fly ash. At present, even if proper air-polluted control measures are
adopted, there would still be a change for air, water and soil
pollution through fly ash. To produce 54,000 MW of electricity, the
thermal power plants in the country consumes as much as 66 per cent
of total coal utilised in the country.
It is true that industrialisation has caused severe
environmental degradation, but the link between number of
industries and polluted load, which was almost linear in the past
decade, is now parabolic. Previously, pollution control was not
considered by industrialists at the designing and financing phase. On
the contrary, these days pollution control and environmental
protection have become an integral part of the design of the
industries, at least in the case of medium and large scale industries.
The strict enforcement of Water (Cess) Act, has taught the
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industrialists the conserve water. The era of economic liberalisation
has increased the pace of industrialisation but impact on the
environment and natural resources is now being monitored
continuously. To protect the environment, our legal provisions are
adequate and more strict than most of the developed countries.
The cope up with the environmental hazards of rapid
industrialisation, participation by the public and NGOs is an essential
factor. Due to restricted funds and manpower, it is difficult for
government agencies to keep a constant watch on each and every
industry. The NGO’s should educate the people regarding
environment and only then would the common man be able to
participate in environmental protection and conservation plans.
The past few years have witnessed a steep rise in aluminium
consumption. Aluminium is probably the second metal after steel in
terms of importance and production. In today’s industrial
civilisation, aluminium is important because it serves as basic input
for a number of industries. However, it is also widely used in
household appliances. Consumption has increased its production in
recent years.
During the production of aluminium, all sorts of pollutants
are generated. During mining, unloading of railway, wagons,
crushing and mixing of additives, lots of dust and particulate matters
are emitted. These can lead to respiratory disorders in the workers.
The process of mining itself is a great hazard to the environment.
The precipitation area in the industry has caustic vapours and
this affects the skin. Toxic and hazardous gases, like carbon
monoxide, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen sulphide and oxides of
nitrogen are present in calcinations area. The most dangerous areas
are green anode shop, anode bake oven and pot room. The people
working here always remain in the fluoride environment. It is well-
known that continues exposure to fluoride leads to a disease,
fluorosis in which bones and teeth are affected. The emission of
fluoride in pot room depends upon the design of the pots. In our
country, mostly three pot designs are used – PB, HSS and VSS. The
PB pot emits 16 kg fluoride per ton of aluminium while the rest emit
20 kg per ton.
It is not that pollution control methods are not available at
every stage. At each stage, pollution may be controlled by simple
precautions. But since the one and only aim of industries is to
produce more and more aluminium at any cost they pay scarce
attention to this aspect.
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World Trade Organisation
The proposal to have an international trade organisation as
mooted first in 1945 at the end of the World War II. During the inter-
war periods, 1919-39, free flow of international trade had been badly
disrupted by various European countries, USA, Canada and Japan
raising high tariff walls and imposing quota restriction in import of
goods into them while, at the same time, restoring to export
promotion through dumping of their products in foreign markets and
engaging in heavy doses of devaluation of their currencies with the
avowed object of making their currencies with the avowed object of
making their exports cheap in other countries and imports from them
in the domestic market dearer.
This beggar thy – neighbour policy of trade not only led to
heavy shrinkage of the volume of world trade but also to a severe
decline in national income and employment levels all around. The
Great Depression of the 1930’s was a product of the ruinous trade
policies followed in the name of economic nationalism. The
Depression, when it came, further accentuated the practice of
economic nationalism on the part of major economies of the world,
thereby leading to further deepening of the depression. The spectre
of the depression haunted the Allies at the end of the war, which they
would like to banish at any cost. An organised reordering of
international trade in the post-war era was an imperative if that goal
was to be achieved. Hence, the proposal to set up the international
Trade Organisation (ITO), an international institution which would
ensure orderliness to the free flow of trade among nations. ITO was
to be part of the institutional framework consisting of Internal
Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank of Reconstruction
and Development (IBRD) known, for brief, as the World Bank,
which would guide and regulate international trade, financing
reconstruction and development of world economies and
determination of exchange value of a currency in world’s other
currencies.
The Bretton Woods Conference in 1945 gave birth to the
twin financial institutions of the IMF and The World Bank. But stout
American opposition to ITO prevented establishment of this all
important member of the envisaged ratio of institutions meant to
impart orderliness to the flow of international trade and finance in
the post-war world. It is after almost a lapse of 50 years that the
vacuum existing since then is now being filled and ITO, in its new
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incarnation of World Trade Organisation (WTO) has been taking
shape from January 1, 1995.
This is not a sudden development. Nor is it a result of any
backtracking on the part of USA to its approach to the subject.
Rather, it is the outcome of fifty-year working of the system of
General Agreement Trade and Tariffs (GATT) that the USA had
suggested in 1945 as an alternative to the proposed ITO. GATT that
came into operation in 1946, was conceived to be a negotiating body
devoted to bringing down tariff rates and removing, step by step,
non-tariff restrictions on the free flow of international trade. This
was to be done by the GATT engaging in successive rounds of
multilateral negotiations among member countries for effecting an
agreement on a given amount of reduction in the level of custom
duties on imports. In all, seven rounds of GATT negotiations were
undertaken over the fifty years from 1946 to the present day, the
Uruguay Round being the last and most productive among them. The
Uruguay Round was the most exhaustive and prolonged one, taking
sever years to complete. It was also far more comprehensive than the
earlier rounds in as much as, besides trade in manufactured goods, it
covered trade in agricultural products, intellectual property rights
(IPR) and services like banking, insurance and shipping. The course
of negotiations was tortuous and there was uncertainty about
completion of the agreement till the deadline, December 15, 1993
that the deal was struck and approval given to the Final Act, as the
Uruguay Round Agreement is called. The agreement is based on
Dunkel proposals. One of the clauses of these proposals is that
GATT would cease to exist and its place would be taken by a
permanent body to look after the affairs of international trade. That
body is to be called the World Trade Organisation.
WTO will start with a membership of around 125 countries.
The Final Act was signed by 123 nations, all of which are likely to
get the GATT agreement approved by their respective legislatures by
the end of 1995. legislation to that effect is before the American
Congress which would have ratified the GATT agreement by the end
of October 1994. There were some doubts earlier that US Congress
may not accord its approval to the GATT agreement and thereby
thwart the birth of WTO on January 1, 1995. These doubts have now
been removed. The way to WTO starting its operations on the
designated date has been cleared.
Unlike GATT, which was an ad hoc affair, WTO is going to
be a permanent entity. It is going to join IMF, and World Bank as the
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third premier institution looking after the conduct of international
economic relations in respect of trade, finance and development. For
future reordering of world economic relations along smoother course
and more equitable lines, the importance of putting an institution,
like WTO in place on a permanent basis, cannot be overemphasised.
The advantages of having WTO are obvious. First, it is the
most progressive instrument for world economic reforms. It
smoothens trade flows worldwide which, in turn, holds promise of
enormous increase in trade opportunities and volume of world trade,
much higher grown rate of world economy, and increase in incomes
and employment world over. Free trade is going to prove an
economic boon to all member-countries of WTO. The gain from free
flow of tax is, of course, not going to be equally distributed among
all member countries, some are obviously going to gain more than
others. It is possible that some rich and large trading countries may
be even hurt, albeit temporarily, by the new world trade order that
the GATT agreement and the WTO are about to rig in. But the world
as a whole is going to gain enormously and USA, the world’s largest
and richest trading nations today, is going to benefit from the new
dispensation in the end.
Second, WTO would save weaker trading countries from
bilateral excesses and arbitrariness that characterise strong trading
countries, notably USA, in dealing with their weaker trading
partners. USA, in its dealings with Japan, China and even Pakistan,
has shown a degree of arrogance that hardly becomes the mighty
nation which presents itself to be the world’s biggest advocate of the
principle of free trade. In the last two years, imposition of sanctions,
under its trade law 301 and Super 301, has kept hanging like the
sword of Damocles over the heads of its perceived erring trade
partners like Japan and China by the USA. This law, which to say the
least, is singularly arbitrary and totally opposed to the spirit of free
trade can have no place in the merging global trade order that the
WTO is charged with the responsibility to administer.
Third, WTO is not only going to supervise the
implementation of Final Act or the last GATT agreement reached in
December 1993. it is also going to act as a sort of international court
of justice for settling trade disputes among member-nations. It is
possible that countries like the USA may get away with their high-
handedness in treatment of their trading partners but this can only be
for sometime. For, unlike in IMF and World Bank, every member-
country of WTO is an equal partner, exercising a single vote in
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decision-making in the councils of the World Trade Organisation.
That should prevent any single country, howsoever powerful,
exercising an undue influence in decision-making.
That developing countries have started standing up to
arbitrariness of the rich and powerful-nations, even in the Councils
of World Bank and IMF is brought out by the experience of Madrid
meeting of these two institutions. This was the 50th annual meeting
called to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the two institutions. It was
proposed to have an issue of 36 billion worth of SDRs by the IMF.
SDR is a sort of reserve currency or “created money”, which is
distributed among member-countries in proportion to the share quota
held by them respectively in the IMF share capital. The issue of SDR
36, which is equivalent to US$ 50 billion, would help some of the
poor nations to finance their trade gap without restoring to additional
international borrowing by them for the purpose. But the rich Group-
7 nations, which comprise USA, UK, Germany, France, Canada,
Britain, and Japan, set its face strongly against the proposal. Instead,
they proposed an issue of only 16 billion SDRs for the avowed aim
of providing succour to Russia and East European economies. In the
past 50 years, G-7 countries had carried through the IMF Council all
resolutions proposed by it unanimously. Not this time, as soon as the
resolution proposing issue of 16 billion SDRs was labelled, the

Developing Tax Culture

System of compulsory contributions levied by a government
or other qualified public body on people, corporations, and property,
in order to fund public expenditure. In deciding whom, what, and
how much to tax, all governments have economic and social
objectives. Some types of business activity or product, such as
cigarettes, may be discouraged by heavy taxes. Other businesses,
such as those operating in depressed areas, may be encouraged by
tax breaks. Or taxation may be used to bring about social reforms
through altering the distribution of wealth.
The effectiveness of any government, at central or local
level, depends on the willingness of the people governed to surrender
or exchange a measure of control over property in return for
protection and other services. Taxation is one form of this exchange.
No sane Pakistani would question the necessity of tax
collection. But the problem is that tax-paying culture has been
missing the country. Why this so?
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In a democracy the people are sovereign. They pay tax and
employ (public) servants to use this money to ensure the security of
their life, honour and property, manage the national affairs through
police, military, bureaucracy and judiciary; and provide civic
amenities like, clean water, electricity, sanitation, communications
(road rail, air service, telephone and postal facilities). They are also
for creation of more jobs, food autarky, education, and healthcare for
all, at affordable cost, as well as old age benefits.
The people have a right to ask: whether even a fraction of
this has been achieved? Does anyone, even those employing security
guards feel secure? Widespread lawlessness, massacres, gang-rapes,
daylight, robberies, attack on villages, water supply at the mercy of
tanker mafia, even in Islamabad and Karachi, negate all the sense of
security, especially when law-enforcers too are involved in crimes.
In such a situation and also when at least one third of
population is below the poverty line, the taxpayer’s lack of
confidence in the state institutions’ competence is understandable.
Unless proper financial management is undertaken, no
amount of tax collection would help, even if the tax is successfully
collected. If the taxpayer is convinced that social and economic
benefits would be accruing to the country, he will certainly pay his
dues.

Non-proliferation: not a moral issue

Even though the background quote is the second decade of
the twentieth century, the mindset behind the remark has shown a
surprising degree of chutzpah to creep its way into the twenty-first
despite its obsolescence.
The issue was imperialist real politik: Britain wanted
Haussain bin Ali, the Sharif of Makkah, to revolt against the Turks to
hasten an Ottoman defeat. Once this was done, Britain would see it
get too big for their boots.
Lieutenant Lawrence – “Lawrence of Arabia” – pleaded with
his boss that Hussain’s men, fighting with muskets, could be better
allies if they were given modern arms, including heavy guns. The
major’s reply was a truthful portrayal of Allied policy.
Shorn of its diplomatic frills and trappings, “non-
proliferation” boils down to a desperate and losing, battle by some of
the nuclear club’s self-righteous members to retain their monopoly of
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the weapons of mass destruction. There is no higher moral end in
view.
Of special relevance here are the policies of non-nuclear,
Japan. To its presumed innocence in matters nuclear we will come
presently. This article, however, focuses on the United States, for it
is the US more than any other nuclear power that is manipulating all
the levers of power available to it to create and perpetuate the myth
of a morality behind non-proliferation.
Essentially, parochial in origin, America’s nuclear policy
initially aimed at confining nuclear weapons to the English-speaking
world, for evidence now available confirms that Washington not
only helped Britain develop her nuclear arsenal, together with
London it pursued a rabidly anti-French policy when Gen de Gaulle
made up his mind to secure France\s membership of the nuclear club.
Stalin, meanwhile, had already had his bomb, and when
France went nuclear on the Bikini atoll, the nuclear bomb was still an
all-white, all-Christian affair. In 1964, Beijing shattered this idyll at
Lop Nor. Ten years later, India exploded a bomb at Pokhran, forcing
Pakistan to match New Delhi’s re-assertion of its nuclear capability
in 1998.
Among all these nations – recognised nuclear powers as well
as those seeking recognition – the United States is the only country
have actually dropped nuclear bombs on human beings. In August
1945, the US air force hurled death and destruction on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, killing and maiming for life 300,000 people.
There was no tactical or strategic need for doing so, for
Germany had already surrendered in May, leaving Japan alone to
face the wrath of Allied military power.
If at all there was a reason for using nuclear weapons, it lay
in inventor’s obvious desire to test the efficacy of his weapon and to
obtain the scientific results of a bomb dropped from the air. Above
all, there was this comfortable assurance that the bomb was being
used against a non-white, non-Christian people, for it is doubtful if –
placed in a similar situation – the Germans would have suffered an
American strike.
Thus, the United States, now making the greatest noise about
the spread of nuclear weapons and sermonising others on the
lethality of such proliferation, is the only country in the world to
have used nuclear weapons on human beings. Morally, it is the last
country on earth to lecture others on the virtues of a nuclear-free
world.
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The other country trying to outdo the United States in the act
is Japan. In May 1998, Tokyo reacted more angrily than perhaps
Washington when Pakistan went nuclear. Behind this anger lies
Japan’s image as the world’s only country that has suffered a nuclear
holocaust.
Actually, Japan is not that innocent when its comes to
nuclear weapons. Japan’s entering the Second World War by an act
of aggression against the Unites States on December 7, 1941, its
amazing victories during the initial stages of the war, and the causes
of its defeat are beyond the scope of this discussion. By attacking a
neutral country and thus turning a European war into a wider
conflict, Japan did no service to mankind or to its own people. What
needs to be brought on record here is that Japan’s stand on nuclear
proliferation today is in sharp contrast to its policy during the war,
for unknown to most people, Japan made a desperate bid to acquire
nuclear weapons but was beaten in the race by the United States.
The account of Japan’s nuclear ambitions is contained in at
least two books – Edward Behr’s Hirohito and Robert Wilcox’s
Japan’s Secret War: Race Against Time to Behind Its Own Atom
Bomb.
The man behind the scientific effort in this direction was
Yoshio Nishina, a brilliant scientist who built Japan’s first cyclotron.
Japan also had a nuclear installation in occupied Korea at Hungnam.
The last desperate bid was in March 1945 when a German
U-boat carrying 1,120 pounds of uranium oxide, with two Japanese
officers on board, headed for Japan to help its scientists to develop
nuclear arms. However, half way through the voyage Germany
surrendered, and the submarine commander refused to proceed
further and decided to surrender to the Americans. The Japanese
officer committed suicide.
Of course, history is full of “ifs” and one can go on arguing
what would have been the course of history if the Japanese had been
able to develop nuclear weapons ahead of the Americans. Given the
life-and-death situation in which Japan was engaged then, there is
nod doubt the fascists in power in Tokyo would have used nuclear
weapons without the slightest hesitation against their enemies,
especially the Chinese, whom they despised more than the others.
This, thus, is the moral position of the two of the world’s
leading advocates of nuclear non-proliferation. One thing, however,
must be said in Japan’s favour: it has shown consistency in its
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nuclear policy and has not, like the Americans, flouted any
principles.
What the successive American administrations have been
guilty of is the pliable kind of non-proliferation yardstick they have
developed and perfected, for it brazenly permits an uninterrupted
development of Israel’s nuclear weapons’ development programme
while forbidding it for others. (France, however, took the lead, for
the Israeli nuclear reactor at Demona was gifted by Paris). Israel now
has anything between 200 and 300 nuclear weapons, some of them
made out of the uranium which the American government one day
discovered “missing”.
All of America’s non-proliferation laws punishing nations
suspected of developing nuclear weapons do not apply to Israel.
Laws like the Symington amendment (ignoring the Pakistan-specific
Pressler amendment) which forbade American aid to any nation
developing nuclear weapons did not apply to Israel, which continues
to be the recipient of America’s economic and military aid in the
form of both loans and outright grants, besides the fee which Israel
extracts from the US for using Israeli port facilities for its naval
units.
Evidently, America is perfectly happy with nuclear weapons
in the hands of this rogue state, which took birth through terrorism
and which has survived through terrorism (both state terrorism of the
kind we see in Indian-occupied Kashmir and the cloak-and-dagger
operations for which this racist state has acquired notoriety, or fame,
depending upon which side of the moral divide one is).
Israel is also the only country in the Middle East, besides
Iraq, which has committed repeated acts of aggression against its
neighbours, with the difference that while an American-led-coalition
punished Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait, amerces has let Israel enjoy
the fruits of aggression.
This being the moral standing of the world’s leading
protagonist of nuclear non-proliferation, Pakistan should be guided
solely by its national interests. Non-proliferation is not a moral issue
but a geopolitical one, inventors and possessors of nuclear weapons
want to maintain their monopoly and would hate, like the British
army officer, to see “them” become independent.
To recap, the world’s leading champions of non-proliferation
do not have any moral legs to stand on: Japan tried but failed to
develop nuclear weapons while the US chose to use Asian human
guinea pigs for testing its nuclear weapons.
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War and Peace
Peace Movement, organized international body of opinion
pressing for disarmament and other goals often associated with
pacifism, especially in the post-war era. Although the modern peace
movement is often characterized as a monolithic, left-wing
organization, it is better understood as a loose alliance of individuals,
non-governmental organizations, pressure groups, campaigning
organizations, and educational bodies. Arguing from a variety of
political and religious perspectives, the modern peace movement
addresses a wide range of issues, among them the prevention and
avoidance of war, the resolution of conflict, arms control and
disarmament, the demilitarization of society, and the reduction of
military spending.
For centuries, religious thinkers and philosophers have
pursued some means or rationale for the prevention of war. In 17th-
and 18th-century Europe, the works of William Penn, Jacques Henri
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel
Kant were among the most important attempts to prescribe the path
to a lasting peace. But the antecedents of the modern movement can
best be traced to early 19th-century Great Britain. In 1816 the
“Society for the Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace” was
founded by the Society of Friends, or Quakers. The early Peace
Societies in Britain and America reflected the Quaker doctrine of
absolute Christian pacifism and their faith in the essential goodness
of human nature. More spiritual than political in their orientation, the
Peace Societies occupied an important but somewhat isolated
position in the developing debate on the conduct of inter-state
relations and the resort to war. There was, however, a secular side to
the early peace movement which took an increasingly active
approach. Political philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham and John
Stuart Mill argued that their goal of reformed, civilized societies
would result in a world in which war and conflict would be
unnecessary and at worst an infrequent occurrence. This argument
was amplified by the free trade movement of the mid-19th century
and the belief that “commerce...is rapidly rendering war obsolete” (J.
S. Mill). Another English thinker, Richard Cobden, took the
argument further by insisting that peace should be the purpose, rather
than a mere attribute, of free trade. In the secular view, conflict
between states would be so seldom that nothing more than an
arbitration system would be required to deal with occasional
aberrations.
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As the 19th century progressed, Christian pacifism was
dismissed in many quarters as utopian and even subversive. At the
same time, however, the number of wars and challenges to national
interest made it plain that free trade was less of a pacifier than might
have been expected. What was needed was some form of
international organization. As a result, late 19th- and early 20th-
century Europe saw renewed interest in earlier ideas that peace could
be brought about through some form of international mechanism or
federation of states. The conduct of wars in late 19th-century Europe
also led, in 1863, to the establishment of the International Committee
of the Red Cross (ICRC). The ICRC campaign for humanitarian
conduct in warfare resulted in the series of Geneva Conventions
beginning in 1864 and the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907. By
the end of the century, the secular side of the peace movement was
dominated by ideas of international law and arbitration, and
cooperation between national parliaments. The Inter-Parliamentary
Union was established in 1892.
World War I had a powerful effect on the peace movement.
Pacifist convictions drove many Quakers, socialist members of the
Fabian Society, and others to become conscientious objectors to
active military service. Other legacies of the war were the work of
the war poets and writers, such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon,
and Erich Maria Remarque, and philanthropic efforts to further the
cause of peace. In 1918 the American industrialist Andrew Carnegie
set up his Endowment for International Peace, which has funded
research into the subject ever since. Some campaigners concluded
that unrestrained state sovereignty remained the greatest threat to
European and world peace. However, proposals for European and
even worldwide federal systems made no progress. The League of
Nations, the first permanent international body dedicated to the
pursuit of peace and collective security, was formed in 1919. The
League was from the outset an arrangement between states and their
governments, rather than an attempt to impose a superior authority
upon states. In 1935 the British League of Nations Union organized a
Peace Ballot on the policies of the League of Nations. An
overwhelming majority of those who voted supported the policy of
collective security, making a firm impression on the government of
the day. The following year, the British Peace Pledge Union was
founded, a pacifist movement opposed to the Spanish Civil War and,
especially, to the view that fascism in Europe could only be stopped
by war. The inter-war period saw further progress in the
humanitarian law of war, most notably the 1925 Geneva Protocol
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against the use of gas and biological weapons. Much attention was
focused on the so-called “merchants of death”, the arms dealers
whose unrestrained activities had, allegedly, prompted and
exacerbated conflict. As a result, many governments created special
export control systems to curb the arms trade.
In the aftermath of World War II another institutional
solution was attempted in the form of the United Nations
Organization. But within a matter of years, hopes for a peaceful new
world order were dashed by the onset of the Cold War and the race
by East and West to rearm. Although the destruction of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki by atomic bombs had shocked and horrified many, the
post-war peace movement was slow to develop, partly through
unwillingness to be associated with the stigma of pre-1939
appeasement, but it was eventually to make its presence felt for the
duration of the Cold War. While some sections of the peace
movement had previously sought to formulate an ideal, peaceful
international system, during the Cold War attention became focused
more closely on the actions of governments, particularly in the area
of the development and acquisition of atomic weapons. Great
Britain's first atomic bomb test took place in 1952. After Britain's
hydrogen bomb test in 1957, and the plutonium accident at the
Windscale plant in the same year, and at a time when British defence
policy was stressing the advantages of nuclear weaponry, the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) came into being.
Thereafter, the peace movement became closely associated with
nuclear disarmament. One of the first acts of the new pressure group
was the march on the Aldermaston weapons research establishment
during Easter 1958. Calls for unilateral disarmament continued
through to the end of the Cold War, prompting the response that the
only safe way to disarm was to do so mutually, in the form of
multilateral arms control treaties. In time CND lost some of its
popular appeal, particularly as superpower arms control agreements
were achieved and East-West relations improved during the détente
of the 1970s. During this period, peace campaigners turned their
attention to other issues. The United States' involvement in the
Vietnam War was an especially inflammatory issue, particularly
during the “student revolt” of the late 1960s.
With the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979,
East-West relations deteriorated dramatically and détente came to an
end. In the same month, the North Atlanic Treaty Organization
agreed the “dual-track” policy, by which several hundred Pershing
and Tomahawk intermediate range nuclear weapons were to be
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deployed in Western Europe. A huge, Europe-wide protest
movement developed, including not only the reinvigorated CND but
also a new movement known as European Nuclear Disarmament
(END). In 1981, the veteran CND campaigner and founder of END,
Edward Palmer Thompson, declared that: “The movement for peace,
West and East, can no longer be content with contesting missiles. We
must strive to loosen Europe from the military hegemony of both
superpowers and to press forward measures of demilitarization in
every part of our continent.” One well-known feature of the
campaign was the “Women's Peace Camp” outside Greenham
Common air force base in England, set up in 1983 when the first US
missiles arrived under the 1979 deployment plan. The campaign was
not successful in stopping the deployment of the nuclear weapons,
but it did bring the issues of peace and disarmament back into open
debate. In the 1980s, the Strategic Defense Initiative or “Star Wars”
plan of US President Ronald Reagan provoked intense discussion of
the suitability of seeking complete protection from nuclear strikes,
and of the financial and technological resources which would be
devoted to the scheme. The peace movement in Europe also began to
look at other, non-nuclear issues such as territorial or “non-
offensive” defence; if equipped with anti-tank rockets rather than
tanks, local militias would be structurally incapable of aggression
and their deployment would therefore defuse tension.
In November 1989 the Berlin Wall was brought down. The
beginning of the end of the Cold War also meant that henceforth the
“peace movement” would have to be defined in still broader terms.
With dwindling membership, the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact
struggled to maintain a role for itself until its collapse on July 1,
1991. Within six months the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had
followed suit, to be replaced by a notional Commonwealth of
Independent States. As enemies and military threats became harder
to define, so it appeared that the European peace movement had once
again lost its purpose. Instead, the peace movement widened its
agenda to take in many new ideas and issues, and revisited some
which had previously been thought peripheral. One such area is non-
offensive defence, which has received increasing interest in
academic and policy-related research. The trade in weapons and
related technology, and the relationship between foreign aid and the
arms trade, have received more attention from sections of the peace
movement, led in Britain by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade.
One weapon, the anti-personnel landmine, has been the focus of a
specially designed international campaign and it may be that other
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weapons, such as laser projectors, will be treated similarly. Other
peace campaigners have focused on freedom of information and
parliamentary oversight in matters of defence and security, and on
the conversion of defence industries to civilian manufacturing. With
the Gulf War, former Yugoslavia, and Somalia in mind, the purpose,
style, and legitimacy of military intervention have also received
attention, as has the structure of Europe's security “architecture” and
the future role of NATO. On a more conceptual level, the definition
and value of such terms as “defence” and “security” after the Cold
War preoccupy many within the modern peace movement. There is
now wide acceptance that security can no longer be defined solely in
traditional military terms, and that account must now be taken of
economic, environmental, and social considerations.
The principal interest of the post-Cold War peace movement
remains the control and/or abolition of nuclear, biological, and
chemical weapons of mass destruction. In spite of the 1993 Chemical
Weapons Convention, problems of enforcement and verification
persist in both the biological and chemical areas, highlighted by the
sarin gas attack on Tokyo's subway system in March 1995. However,
the main concern is nuclear proliferation of technology and weapons.
With the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) due to be
reviewed in 1995, CND called for only a limited extension of the
treaty, in order to compel the nuclear-weapon states to honour
disarmament promises made in 1968. Other issues connected to the
NPT review include the negotiation of a comprehensive nuclear test
ban, the monitoring, storage, and reprocessing of fissile material, the
provision of security assurances by the nuclear weapon states to the
“nuclear have-nots”, and the adequacy of the safeguards system
operated by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Where
weapons of mass destruction are concerned, governments and
pressure groups now share similar concerns regarding the dangers of
proliferation. The discovery of sophisticated nuclear, biological, and
chemical weapon facilities in Iraq after the Gulf War, the fears
generated by North Korea's nuclear programme, and the likelihood
that nuclear weapons and materials are now available on the
international black market, have combined to create a common sense
of danger and urgency. The various non-governmental organizations
and pressure groups involved have become technically expert and
politically astute, to the extent that they often appear to be
campaigning more within government than against it, and are
arguably more effective as a result. In other areas such as the
international arms trade and the anti-personnel landmines issue,
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previously thought to be second-order problems, the peace
movement has retained more of its traditional, confrontational
character. Whatever the issue, the peace movement in all its forms is
sure to retain a large and vocal following, particularly in democratic
societies, and will continue to bring issues of defence and security
into more open debate.
Britain's main voice in the international peace movement is
the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), shown here on a
mass demonstration headed by the former Labour party leader,
Michael Foot. Founded in 1958, CND saw its membership soar to
250,000 in the mid-1980s following the stationing of cruise missiles
at Greenham Common US Air Force base in Berkshire.

Environmentalism
Approach to economic and ecological questions stressing
that factors of environmental impact (such as pollution or loss of
biodiversity), whether local or global, must be taken into account and
properly weighted in assessing the acceptability of human actions.
By campaigning and other actions environmentalists, usually as
members of a like-minded group, seek to raise awareness of specific
environmental concerns. These activities may take the form of work
by pressure groups or looser associations of campaigners, or the
parliamentary processes of the various parties involved in green
politics.
Concern about environmental degradation is not a new
phenomenon. For instance, in the 4th century BC the Greek
philosopher Plato worried about the effects of deforestation and soil
erosion. The roots of modern environmentalism may be found in
Victorian Britain when natural history became a popular pastime.
Gradually, as the effects of rapid and often uncontrolled
industrialization became evident, the emphasis shifted from the study
of nature to a desire to protect it. The first recorded environmental
pressure group was the Commons, Open Spaces and Footpaths
Preservation Society, founded in 1865. At about the same time, the
first national parks were being established in the United States.
Today’s environmentalists can be seen as the direct
descendants of these early movements, and may be divided into four
broad categories: 1) Single-issue campaigning organizations, such as
Friends of the Earth, Green peace, or the World Wide Fund for
Nature. 2) Advocates of environmental protection within other
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organizations and institutions such as the Church, education,
business, or professional bodies. 3) Developers of relevant theories
and practices for environmental protection, such as ecological
economics, organic farming, or renewable energy technology. 4)
“Green” political parties.
From the late 1960s to the mid-1980s the first three of these
groups brought the issues to the attention of both governments and
the public, using various tactics, including sometimes confrontational
campaigning.
During the 1980s a new phase of environmentalism began:
policy responses to a wide range of environmental problems were
developed; in some countries green parties were formed; a growing
number of local projects demonstrated how these policies might
work in practice; and people began to accept environmental
protection as a matter for sustained everyday concern, rating it in
opinion polls alongside unemployment and other manifestations of
economic insecurity. Membership of environmental organizations
outstripped that of political parties and began to challenge other mass
membership organizations, such as trade unions.
By the mid-1990s, the need properly to integrate
environmental protection with social and economic policies has led
environmental activists to form strategic partnerships. For instance,
Greenpeace, a group of insurance companies, and the G-77 group of
developing countries worked together to influence the first review of
the Convention on Climate Change agreed at the United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development (commonly known as
the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro in June, 1992). In April
1996, Real World was founded in the United Kingdom—a coalition
of over 30 pressure groups covering issues of the environment,
development, social justice, and democratic renewal, and united by
what members see as the root cause of their individual areas of
concern—the inherent unsustainability of current world trends in
economic and social policy. Sustainable development is increasingly
seen as a central concept in evolving new strategies for future
growth.
The Greenpeace and Real World initiatives echo at
international and national level the partnership approach which has
been active at local level for some time. One high-profile instance is
the UK anti-roads campaigns. These have involved coalitions of
small, locally based groups joining forces to target and disrupt
specific road-building projects, such as the M3 extension at Twyford
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Down, Hampshire, the M11 extension in north London, the M77
extension in Glasgow, and the Bath and Newbury bypasses. These
coalitions have been remarkable in uniting advocates of anarchist
and new-age philosophies with more conservative elements among
local settled communities in a common front against what they see as
an unacceptable trade-off between the conflicting interests of road
transport and the environment.
In the United Kingdom, an electoral process in which small
parties have difficulty gaining representation in Parliament has
meant that environmentalists have tended to bypass party politics
altogether, either through organizing in more powerful coalitions of
the type described above, or through a kaleidoscope of local self-help
activities which cross traditional activist group boundaries. In much
of Western Europe and beyond, however, environmentalism has
consolidated in and around the democratic process with political
parties taking certain issues into their electoral agenda. In some
countries, such as Germany and Sweden, green parties are now
viewed as an established part of the political spectrum.
The first time an environmental issue was taken to the polls
was when the United Tasmania Group (UTG) in Australia, amid
contoversy over a hydroelectric plan to flood Lake Pedder, contested
state elections in April 1972. When UTG leader Richard Jones wrote
a pamphlet entitled New Ethic to outline his group’s programme, it
was as much about community and political integrity as
environmental protection. One month later, when the world’s first
nationwide green party was formed in neighbouring New Zealand, it
called itself Values.
Inspired by the Tasmanian and New Zealand greens, the first
European green party was founded in Britain in 1973. Originally
called People (later Ecology party and finally Green party), its
founder members were greatly influenced by the idea of a rapidly
growing population putting an intolerable strain on the Earth’s
capacity to provide resources and absorb pollution. This
understanding eventually led to the setting up of the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP).
One of the popular books of this time was Blueprint for
Survival, published by the British magazine The Ecologist. From it
People drew the basis of its political programme. Blueprint
suggested that the principal characteristics of a society that could “to
all intents and purposes ... be sustained indefinitely while giving
optimum satisfaction to its members” would be: (1) minimum
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disruption of ecological processes; (2) maximum conservation of
materials and energy; (3) a population in which “recruitment”
(births) equals “loss” (deaths—that is, a static, rather than increasing,
population); (4) a social system in which individuals can enjoy,
rather than feel restricted by, the first three conditions.
Developments of these principles, which are closely related to the
concept of sustainable development, make up the programmes of
most green parties today.
A Swiss, Daniel Brélaz, made history in 1979 by becoming
the first green to be elected to a national parliament. Two years later
four greens were elected to the Belgian parliament. Neither event
made much impact. It was the gain in 1983 of 28 seats in the German
Bundestag by Die Grünen, led by the charismatic Petra Kelly, that
really heralded the birth of a new political force—the first for over
half a century. Since then, green parties have won seats at some level
of local government in a large number of countries, and entered both
the European parliament and 20 national parliaments (see table). The
Federation of European Green Parties notes the existence of over 70
parties on six continents.
Although in some countries the nature of the electoral
system or weak internal organization of green parties has prevented
electoral success, steady progress has occurred in the Netherlands,
Finland, the Republic of Ireland, and Switzerland. In March 1995
Finland’s Pekka Haavisto became the first green to join a national
government (as Minister for Environment and Planning). And
despite domestic political upheavals in Italy (the anti-corruption
drive) and Sweden (the collapse of social-democratic consensus),
greens there have managed to keep (and in Sweden’s case regain)
most of their parliamentary seats. Two capital cities, Dublin and
Rome, have had a green mayor.
Many of the democratic movements in Eastern Europe had
their roots in environmental groups, such as Ecoglasnost in Bulgaria,
the Danube Circle in Hungary, the Ecological Library in East
Germany, and the Polish Ecological Club, with several greens
joining transitional governments or winning seats in parliaments
when elections were held. However, as the difficulties of reforming
economies and building a civil society became apparent, many of
these seats were lost in subsequent elections.
Beyond Europe, Tasmanian Green Independents have held
seats in the state parliament, and Values has re-formed as the Green
Party of New Zealand. For greens in Canada and the United States,
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the difficulties of nationwide organizing have kept activity local,
while in Japan, the green party has been eclipsed by the Seikatsu
Club. The Club promotes “green” consumption and, with a turnover
of around US$300 million per year, has influenced production of
both agricultural and manufactured goods.
Green parties are active in Africa and in South and Central
America, but only the long-established Partido Verde of Brazil is
represented in a national parliament. As in Japan, and especially in
countries where access to the political process is difficult or
impossible, it has tended to be non-party activity which has had the
biggest political impact. One of the best-known examples comes
from northern India, where women of the Chipko Andolan used the
slogan “ecology is permanent economy” and hugged trees to prevent
the logging which was destroying their communities.
In the 1990s environmentalism entered a new phase. With
governments in broad agreement over the seriousness of
environmental problems, sustainable development (defined by UNEP
as “development which improves people’s quality of life, within the
carrying capacity of the Earth’s life-support system”) has become a
main objective for all parties. At the same time, pressure groups and
coalitions of activists, working through specific and often
emblematic issues, seek to bring about a fundamental shift in
perceptions of the environment in the public at large.
We hear lots of bad news about the environment. But there’s
plenty of good news too. We need it. If environmentalists offer too
much bad news, the public will become despondent until they feel
paralysed—and then they will do nothing about the problems. This is
a natural human reaction. I would do it myself. I would tune out the
bad news in the first place.
So here are some pieces of good news. Let’s start with the
atmosphere and climate. The ozone layer is on the point of
recovering. This success story dates back to 1987, when scientists
began to speak with a single, decibels-loud voice. The world’s
governments moved in just nine months (instant speed for
governments) to conclude a treaty to eliminate chlorofluorocarbons
(CFCs) and other ozone-destroying chemicals. All too often, when a
dozen governments get together they are unlikely to agree on the
time of day. Yet 163 governments signed the treaty.
Now for what many scientists believe is the biggest
environmental problem ahead, global warming. To tackle it we need
to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels, viz. coal, oil, and natural
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gas. Burning fossil fuels gives off carbon dioxide, and the build-up
of that greenhouse gas causes half of global warming processes. To
cut back on fossil fuels, we should build more efficient cars, insulate
our buildings better, and use advanced light bulbs. Amory Lovins, a
Colorado scientist, is well on the way to inventing a streamlined and
hybrid-power car that will drive from New York to Los Angeles on a
single tankful of petrol. He and his wife Hunter live at 7,100 feet in
the Rocky Mountains where the winter temperature often plunges
below freezing every night for weeks if not months on end. Their
house with its exceptional energy-efficiency installations leaves them
with an annual heating bill of less than $50 (£30). Nor did the house
need way-out and costly technology. All items had long been
available at the local store, and the Lovins’s energy savings paid off
their capital investment within two years.
The same applies to most other forms of energy efficiency. If
all of us made use of them, we could save two-fifths of our carbon
dioxide emissions straightaway. We would cut back not only on
carbon dioxide but acid rain and urban smog as well—and we would
put money in our pockets. An average British household could save
enough during a year to take the family off for a long weekend
holiday. It is what is known in the trade as a “win-win” situation
where nobody ends up a loser.
Consider how our house lighting can save on electricity and
hence on fossil fuels. In Japan, more than 80 per cent of homes are lit
with low-power and long-lasting bulbs that give light as good as
conventional bulbs. In Norway, one home in every 25 (50,000 in
total) are powered by photovoltaics. In Kenya, 20,000 homes are
electrified with solar cells, or 3,000 more than by hooking up with
the central power grid. If price trends of the 1990s continue, solar
technologies will provide power at 6 cents per kWh by the year
2000, making it broadly competitive with electricity derived from
fossil fuels.
Much the same applies to wind power. During just the past
few years, generating capacity has risen rapidly until wind power is
now the fastest-growing energy source. In Germany, its output has
topped 1,000 MW, making it the world’s most energetic (sic) wind-
power market. India possesses the second fastest growing wind-
power industry with 500 MW installed, while China plans on 1,300
MW by the year 2000. In California there are 1,700 turbines
generating enough electricity to supply all of San Francisco’s
people. By late 1995, 25,000 wind turbines worldwide produced
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nearly 5,000 MW of power, albeit only 0.1 per cent of the world’s
electricity. In many parts of the world, the cost of wind-generated
electricity has fallen by two-thirds since 1990, and in many regions it
has become competitive with new coal-fired power plants. As wind
turbines enter mass production, costs should soon fall below 4 cents
per kWh, making wind one of the least expensive electricity sources.
The fossil-fuel industries, worth over $1 trillion worldwide,
will, of course, work to counter this treat, and they can mobilize
impressive financial muscle for lobbying campaigns. However, they
are being challenged by another corporate giant, the insurance
industry, worth $1.5 trillion worldwide. Insurers have suffered from
ever-increasing payouts for floods, droughts, hurricanes, and other
extreme weather events, all of which are steadily on the rise as
probable portents of global warming. Insurance leaders on both sides
of the Atlantic have asserted that if the trend persists, it could
precipitate a crisis in the industry by the year 2000, with all manner
of knock-on effects for banks and other finance institutions such as
pension funds, thus affecting all citizens.
Examples of environmentally friendly practices making
good business sense are increasing. Minnesota Mining and
Manufacturing, makers of scotch tape and many other office
supplies, has saved more than $750 million since 1975 through its
recycling and waste management practices. The eco-technology
market as a whole was worth $210 billion in 1992 in developed
countries, and is expected to reach $320 billion by the year 2000—
only a little less than the global chemicals industry, now worth $350
billion.
Much eco-technology is being deployed in the
Mediterranean countries, following a remarkable political
breakthrough that is coming to full fruition. By the mid-1970s
concern was rising that the Mediterranean Sea was dying from
industrial effluents and the like. Both fishing and tourism were in
steep decline. The governments concerned, among them some
traditional enemies such as Israel and Syria, Greece and Turkey,
Egypt and Libya, France and Algeria, and Spain and Morocco, came
together around a United Nations table and tackled their common
problem with a common solution. Virtually all the coastal states have
ratified the Barcelona Convention for the Protection of the
Mediterranean Sea Against Pollution (1976) and its associated
protocols. Today the Mediterranean is in better shape than for
decades, thanks to its Clean-Up Plan. Many of the states now treat
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their sewage before discharging it into the sea, industrial pollution
has been reduced, and eight out of ten beaches are considered safe
for swimming once more. The Mediterranean Clean-Up Plan is being
replicated in other “regional seas”, including the Persian Gulf where
Iran and Iraq sit side by side at the negotiating table.
There is still, of course, much to be done. In developing
countries, there can hardly be a more widespread pollution problem
today than dirty water. It is the source of 90 per cent of all disease
there, and it helps to kill millions of children every year. As long as
parents see their children dying, they won’t be interested in family
planning. Rather they will produce as many children as they can
manage in order to be sure that at least some survive to support the
parents in old age. So a prime means to defuse the population
explosion lies with clean water—and it is the main defence against
the number one problem, diarrhoea. We already save four million
children a year, but we could easily save another three million from
this scourge.
We could save a further two million children from other
water-related diseases through mass immunization. The two
measures together would cost only $15 (£9) per child a year, while
avoiding future medical costs averaging $150 (£90). Rich countries
usually contribute one quarter of the bill, the rest being paid by
developing countries themselves. To save the additional five million
children each year, the extra cost to the rich-world taxpayer would be
the equivalent of a beer every second month. It adds up to a splendid
opportunity. No other generation has ever had the chance to save so
many children, and at such trifling cost.
Why is it taking so long to do something about it? A major
reason is the lack of awareness. But that is changing, as the large
increase in environmental pressure groups and public opinion
surveys show. It is partly in response to this growing public
awareness that political and military leaders are starting to recall
what one visionary statesman, Mikhail Gorbachev, said, that the
threat from the skies is no longer nuclear missiles but climate
dislocation.
Finally, let us remind ourselves that there is no limit to what
we can do when we set our minds to it. Just the four years 1989-1992
saw the end of the Berlin Wall, the Cold War, Communism, and the
Soviet Union; and we made solid moves toward peace in South
Africa, the Middle East, and El Salvador. Who would have taken on
a bet in 1989 that we would achieve that much by the year 2000?
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And in light of the good news items above, shouldn’t we consider
that we face insurmountable opportunities?

Nuclear Testing
Nuclear explosions conducted to test nuclear weapons.
These may be new designs under development or existing stockpile
weapons. The total explosive power of nuclear test explosions
carried out to date is estimated to be the equivalent of about 510
million tonnes (510 megatons) of TNT, equivalent to 40,000 times
the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
A new type of nuclear weapon requires about seven or eight
tests before it is put into a country’s nuclear arsenal. In addition,
existing stockpile weapons are tested to check that they still work
reliably (a warhead is taken at random from the stockpile and
exploded), and to improve the safety of nuclear weapons. In these
tests, new safety features incorporated in the weapons, such as non-
sensitive high explosives, are tested. The sheer numbers, power in
terms of megatons, and spectacle of the above-ground tests were
essential elements of Cold War competition between the nuclear
powers, which to many was considered the true purpose of the tests.
Nuclear explosions have also been carried out for non-
military purposes, for example, for creating underground storage
cavities for gas, extracting gas and oil, extinguishing burning oil
wells, and building canals. Non-military nuclear explosives are
similar to nuclear weapons and military information can be obtained
from exploding them. However, objections to “peaceful” nuclear
explosions tend to be mainly economic and environmental.
Nuclear tests have been conducted in space, under water, in
the atmosphere, on the surface of land, and on water (carried on a
raft or contained in a ship, for example). Nuclear weapons exploded
in the atmosphere have been dropped as bombs from aircraft,
suspended on balloons, exploded on towers, and fired aloft by
rockets.
Zero-yield or subcritical tests involve high explosives and
fissile material in which the fissile material does not reach a critical
mass and therefore does not produce significant fission energy but
allows scientists to assess design features and safety. Computer
simulation of nuclear explosions has also been carried out by the
major nuclear weapons laboratories. Some observers argue that zero-
yield tests and computer simulation allow nuclear-weapon powers to
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improve the performance of their existing nuclear weapons and
possibly even develop new types of nuclear weapons.
Others claim that the development of new types of nuclear weapons
is not possible without actually testing them. It is also argued that
fundamental civilian scientific research will provide nuclear-
weapons designers with the knowledge needed to develop an entirely
new generation of nuclear weapons.
The first nuclear test, code-named Trinity, was conducted by
the United States on July 16, 1945, in the desert near Alamogordo,
New Mexico. As the culmination of the Manhattan Project, the
Trinity test was set up to try out the first plutonium weapon using the
implosion method of detonation. The Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR) began testing nuclear weapons in 1949, the
United Kingdom followed in 1952; France in 1960; and China in
1964. Each of these four powers conducted nuclear tests in the
atmosphere, until 1963, and underground thereafter. The United
States, the USSR, France, and the United Kingdom have also
conducted tests under water. India officially became a nuclear power
when it conducted five underground nuclear tests and a missile test
in May 1998, with Pakistan following suit days later with six
underground tests. These tests raised fears of a nuclear arms race, or
even a conflict, on the subcontinent.
The five officially recognized nuclear powers carried out
most of their atmospheric and underground nuclear tests at remote
sites, such as in the Nevada desert in the south-western United
States; the Marshall Islands and Christmas Islands in the Pacific
Ocean; Moruroa and Fangataufa, two atolls in French Polynesia; and
Maralinga in Australia.
Out of a total of 2,050 nuclear explosions, about 1,300 have
been carried out by the United States. As the Cold War gathered
pace, public opposition to atmospheric testing grew, and on August
5, 1963, the United States, the USSR, and the United Kingdom
signed a Partial Test Ban Treaty, banning nuclear explosions in the
atmosphere, outer space, and under water. France stopped
conducting nuclear tests in the atmosphere in 1974; China, in 1980.
In 1962 alone, there had been 178 tests; the 500 atmospheric nuclear
tests had a total explosive power equivalent to that of about 30,000
Hiroshima bombs. The largest of these—and the most powerful
explosion ever—was conducted by the USSR at Novaya Zemlya in
1961; it had an explosive power equivalent to that of 58 megatons,
about four times larger than the largest US test.
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Underground nuclear tests were typically conducted at the
bottom of shafts. Instruments used to measure the characteristics and
effects of the nuclear explosions were placed in tunnels running off
the shafts. French tests at the Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls, for
example, were conducted at the bottoms of shafts bored to depths of
up to 1,200 m (4,000 ft) into the basalt core of the atoll.
Atmospheric nuclear tests have resulted in polluting the
Earth with radioactive isotopes. Near the test sites, they produced
intense radioactive fallout, seriously harming the health of local
populations and the environment. They also spread radioactivity
around the globe that will persist for thousands of years. Exposure to
the radiation from this radioactive fallout has already resulted in
hundreds of cancer deaths; it is estimated that eventually the death
toll may rise to about 2 million people.
In the Marshall Islands tests, the inhabitants of Rongelap
were seriously exposed to radiation. On average, they received a
radiation dose of about 190 rems (radiation units). This dose was,
according to current medical opinion, sufficient to cause a 1 in 7
(extra) risk of dying of cancer. Medical examinations carried out on
adults in Rongelap between 1970 and 1974, which compared
exposed and unexposed inhabitants, showed that there was a higher-
than-average incidence among those exposed of anaemia, thyroid
disease, rheumatic heart disease, and tumours. All water samples
taken from Bikini and Enewetak islands showed that the level of
radioactive contamination was too high to allow consumption of
food grown on the island or fished from the sea; only in 1983 were
the inhabitants of Rongelap made aware of these findings. As a
result, in 1985 they had to evacuate to a smaller, uncultivated island
on Kwajalein Atoll.
The fragile Moruroa Atoll has been seriously affected by the
French nuclear testing programme, which was resumed briefly in
1995 and has caused the atoll to begin sinking—some 5 m (16y ft)
by the mid-1980s—into the lagoon. In 1979 a bomb was trapped in
the 800-m (2,625-ft) test shaft and exploded, causing a tidal wave. In
Australia, British tests were conducted on Aboriginal lands, vast
areas of which were left contaminated with scattered, partially buried
radioactive debris; many Aborigines suffered radiation sickness and
died.
In the 1980s, when British, Australian, and American ex-
servicemen began to die of cancer, the effects on army personnel
taking part in the tests—most of whom had no protective clothing or
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medical monitoring for after-effects—began to be known. In many
cases, servicemen would observe the explosion and then undertake
military combat exercises thereafter, as training for the possible
future use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield. Livestock were also
used as experimental animals in many early nuclear tests.
When the biggest US bomb, code-named Bravo, was set off,
radioactive white ash fell on Rongelap, contaminating food and
drinking water; children playing nearby rubbed the ash on their faces
and arms. It has been claimed that the test was carried out with the
knowledge that winds were blowing directly towards unevacuated
islands.
Underground nuclear testing produces high levels of fallout
when the explosion is not totally contained underground, but instead
escapes through vents into the atmosphere. Many underground tests
are known to have vented in this way. Even when the tests are
contained, they leave behind large amounts of long-lived radioactive
wastes in an underground cavity. Generally, the explosion destroys
the ability of the cavity to contain the radioactivity, which is likely to
last for thousands of years. It is probable that some radioactivity will
escape into the groundwater and then into the human environment at
some of the many sites where underground nuclear tests have been
carried out, such as Semipalatinsk in the former Soviet Union, which
are now severely blighted.
A Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was opened for
signature at the United Nations General Assembly in September
1996, which is expected to put an end to all nuclear testing.
A comprehensive test ban can only be effective if it is
verified, in order for the parties to the treaty to have confidence in it.
Verification will rely on a global network of seismic stations and
hydroacoustic arrays, supplemented by atmospheric monitoring
stations, which can detect reliably any nuclear test with an explosive
yield with an equivalent to 1,000 tonnes of TNT (1 kiloton). By
April 1998 the CTBT had been signed by 149 countries, including
the UK , France, and Israel; out of this total, some 13 countries have
completed the process of ratification. However, the treaty has to be
ratified by 44 countries known to have either nuclear weapons or
nuclear reactors from which nuclear weapons might be derived.
France Detonates Nuclear Device at Pacific Test Site
Paris—Defying growing worldwide protests, France began a
series of nuclear weapons tests [on] Tuesday, detonating a nuclear
device at remote Mururoa atoll in the South Pacific.
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The underground explosion marked the first of as many as
eight tests that the French government has said it will conduct in the
South Pacific through[out] May, and it is sure to add fuel to the
international campaign against France that has spawned angry
demonstrations from Australia to Japan to France.
“These programs are indispensable so that we can be in a
position to guarantee the viability and the certainty of our nuclear
arms in the long term,” said a statement issued by the French
Defense Ministry. “The nuclear deterrent guarantees our
independence and the ultimate protection of our vital interests.”
The bomb—the equivalent of less than 20,000 tons of TNT
—was detonated at 12:30 p.m. (2:30 p.m. PDT [Pacific Daylight
Time]), according to Col. Abel Moittier, a French military
spokesman in Papeete, Tahiti, the capital of French Polynesia in the
South Pacific.
“This is the first test, but it has to be the absolute last,” said
Sebia Hawkins, a spokesman in Fiji for the environmental group
Greenpeace, which has repeatedly mounted protests against France's
nuclear-testing plans. “The world has to unleash as much pressure as
it possibly can at this stage to ensure this becomes a reality.”
French President Jacques Chirac had decided during the
summer to begin what he described as a final round of tests at the
French-owned Pacific atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa, arguing that
the explosions would give scientists important information and allow
them to do future tests by computer simulation.
He also has promised that when the testing is complete,
France will end its tests and sign an international nuclear test ban
treaty.
In Washington on Tuesday, the White House issued a
statement expressing regret at the French move.
“We continue to urge all of the nuclear powers, including
France, to refrain from further nuclear tests and to join in a global
moratorium as we work to complete and sign a comprehensive test
ban treaty in 1996,” the statement said.
Last month, U.S. diplomats, who had earlier pressed the
French not to conduct the tests at all, asked Chirac's government to at
least refrain from staging the test while President Clinton was
presiding over V-J Day commemorations in Hawaii over the
weekend.
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Congressman Eni Falcomavaega, the non-voting delegate
from American Samoa in the Pacific, denounced the tests as “a very
sad commentary on French colonialism” and called for a worldwide
boycott of French products.
Falcomavaega, a Democrat, had returned earlier [on]
Tuesday from French Polynesia, where French commandos had
arrested and briefly detained him while he was aboard the
Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior 2 near Mururoa over the
weekend.
The Tuesday blast ended France's 3-year-old moratorium on
nuclear tests, which former President Francois Mitterrand declared
without consulting his own scientists or military officials.
Between 1960 and 1992, France conducted 204 nuclear tests,
17 of them in the 1960s in the Sahara desert and the remainder in
French Polynesia. Mururoa has been used for most of those.
Although Australia has been one of the most vocal opponents of the
resumption of French tests, the French atolls are actually closer to
Los Angeles than to Sydney.
Opponents of the tests, arguing that they could damage the
environment, had employed a wide variety of tactics in an effort to
persuade Chirac to back away from his decision. Dozens of marches
and hunger strikes have been staged in Papeete, about 600 miles
northwest of the blast site, as well as in Australia, Japan and France.
Protesters in Australia have burned the French flag—one
person even set fire to a French consulate—and the Australian
government is engaged in a trade war with France over the issue.
Police in Paris last week banned a protest march through the center
of the city and then arrested 300 demonstrators trying to deliver a
petition to Chirac's office at the Elysee Palace.
In Europe, anti-nuclear activists have called on consumers to
launch their own economic boycott against French products,
particularly wine and other well-known symbols of the country.
About 3 million people have signed petitions against the tests,
including 1,200 French scientists.
Greenpeace has sailed its flagship Rainbow Warrior 2 to
within a few miles of the Mururoa atoll. The ship has twice been
stopped by French commandos and towed back into international
waters. During the last clash with Greenpeace, on Friday, French
military officers also arrested several divers who swam beneath the
testing platform.
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France and China are the only countries known to be
conducting nuclear tests. China carried out its most recent test last
month.
Seeking to counter widespread condemnation of the tests,
which are opposed by 60% of the French according to recent opinion
polls, the French government has released a barrage of information
on its nuclear program, including details of radiation contamination.
It even invited foreign reporters to Mururoa, a closed atoll, last
month to answer questions about its program.
French government scientists contend that of the more than
200 tests the country has conducted in the past, only three have
caused radiation contamination. Two tests in 1966 and a third in
1973 caused some contamination at Mururoa and 25 miles away at
Fangataufa, which the government says was cleaned up.
Current government statistics indicate that the level of
radiation in the atolls is lower than in France, where the effects of the
1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant accident in the former Soviet Union
still are measurable, although not considered to be a health threat. In
the lagoon waters of the atolls, radiation levels are slightly above
normal but still below levels in the Baltic Sea, according to the
French.
But anti-nuclear activists argue that the tests may have done
damage, still undetected, to the fragile coral reef. Atolls are used in
nuclear testing because they lie atop great volcanic mountains on the
floor of the ocean. Coral adheres to the mountain, thickening and
growing upward over millions of years, eventually creating a strip of
land above water that is the atoll.
Nuclear tests are typically carried out deep inside the dead
volcanic mountains. Scientists dig a well 2,000 to 3,000 feet deep,
then put long cylinders into the well that contain measuring
equipment and the nuclear device. When the device is detonated,
sensors have one-millionth of a second to record the blast data before
they are destroyed.
French scientists told reporters in Mururoa last month that
the blasts create a molten lava inside the well that turns within
minutes into a glass-like substance that traps the radioactivity in the
mountain. About 2,000 French soldiers, sailors, scientists and
technicians live on Mururoa.
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International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Specialized agency of the United Nations, established, along
with the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
(the World Bank), at the UN Monetary and Financial Conference
held in 1944 at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. The IMF began
operations in 1947. Its purpose is to promote international monetary
co-operation and to facilitate the expansion and balanced growth of
international trade through the establishment of a multilateral system
of payments for current transactions and the elimination of foreign
trade restrictions. The IMF is a permanent forum for consideration of
issues of international payments, in which member nations are
encouraged to maintain an orderly pattern of exchange rates and to
avoid restrictive exchange practices. It also provides advice on
economic policy and fiscal policy, promotes world policy co-
ordination, and gives technical assistance for central banks,
accounting, taxation, and other financial matters. Membership,
currently comprising 182 countries, is open to all sovereign nations.
Members undertake to keep the IMF informed about
economic and financial policies that impinge on the exchange value
of their national currencies so that other members can make
appropriate policy decisions. On joining the fund, each member is
assigned a quota in special drawing rights (SDRs), the fund's unit of
account since its establishment in 1969, whose value is based on the
weighted average value of five major currencies. (In early 1999 the
SDR was worth US$0.7338.) This replaced the old system whereby
subscription of members was to be 75 per cent currency and 25 per
cent gold. The total quotas at the end of August 1998 were SDR
145.3 billion. Each member's quota is an amount corresponding to its
relative position in the world economy. As the world's leading
economy, in 1997 the United States has the largest quota, some SDR
25.5 billion; the smallest quota is about SDR 3.5 million. The
amount of the quota subscription determines how large a vote a
member will have in IMF deliberations, how much foreign exchange
it may withdraw from the fund, and how many SDRs it will receive
in periodic allocations. Thus, the European Union has almost 30 per
cent of the voting strength, while the United States has slightly less
than 20 per cent (1999).
Members who have temporary balance of payments
difficulties may apply to the fund for needed foreign currency from
its pool of resources, to which all members have contributed through
 195
payment of their quota subscriptions. The IMF may also borrow
from official institutions, and the General Agreement to Borrow of
1962 gave it the right to borrow from the so-called “Paris Club” of
industrialized countries, which have undertaken to make up to
US$6.5 billion available if needed (this sum was raised to US$17
billion). The member may use this foreign exchange for a certain
time (up to about five years) to extricate itself from its balance of
payments problem, after which the currency is to be returned to the
IMF's pool of resources. The borrower pays a below-market rate of
interest for the IMF resources it uses; the member whose currency is
used receives almost all of these interest payments; the remainder
goes to the fund for operating expenses. The IMF is thus not a bank,
but sells countries SDRs in exchange for their own currency.
The IMF also supports economic development, such as the
establishment of functioning free market economies in the former
Warsaw Pact countries. This includes a special temporary fund,
established in 1993, to offset trade and balance of payments
difficulties experienced by any member country abandoning artificial
price control policies. Its Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility
(ESAF) assists developing countries with economic reform. By the
end of April 1998 it had provided SDR 6.4 billion to 48 countries.
Loans under IMF terms frequently have stiff clauses attached
regarding domestic economic policy: these have been the cause of
some friction between the IMF and its debtors in the past.
The IMF commenced operating in 1947. It initially aimed to
confine exchange rate fluctuations between member currencies to
within 1 per cent of a par value quoted in terms of the US dollar and
hence linked to gold; 25 per cent of members' subscriptions were to
be in gold. The first major change in policy was the General
Agreement to Borrow, concluded in 1962 when it became clear that
the fund needed increasing. The 1967 IMF meeting in Rio de Janeiro
led to the creating of the Special Drawing Right as a standard
international unit of account.
In 1971 the IMF's par value system was renegotiated to
allow a 10 per cent devaluation of the dollar and a broadening of
fluctuation ranges to 2.25 per cent. The sharp oil price rises after
1973 severely affected member countries' balances of payments, and
led effectively to the end of the Bretton Woods agreement to restrict
exchange rate fluctuations. Revision of the fund's articles in 1976
ended gold's role as a basis for the IMF and hastening the demise of
the gold standard, which the dollar left in 1978.
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From 1982 the IMF devoted much of its resources to the
resolution of the worldwide debt crisis, caused by excessive lending
to developing countries. It assisted indebted members to devise
programmes of economic adjustment and has backed this assistance
with massive lending. In conjunction with its own loans, it
encouraged additional lending from commercial banks. As the
realization grew that the problems of its members involved long-term
structural inadequacies, the IMF established new facilities, using
funds borrowed from better-off members, to provide money in larger
amounts and for longer periods to members that seek to reorganize
their economies.
The IMF acquired an important new remit at the end of the
1980s with the implosion of European Communism and the
appearance of a host of European states determined to join the global
capitalist system. This role was initially met through a series of new
funds for overhauling the former command economies of Central and
Eastern Europe. The debt crisis by this time had largely abated.
The IMF has to some extent lost its original form and
purpose, since exchange rates are now largely left to the currency
markets to determine. Modern regimes that control exchange rates,
such as the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, are usually tied to
convergence programmes design to produce international currencies,
and the ERM's breakdown in 1992 demonstrated the IMF's relative
impotence when confronted with currency problems in modern
developed economies. The financial crisis in Mexico in 1995 showed
once more that IMF funds are now unequal to the vast amounts of
private capital circulating in the world economy. The financial crises
in Mexico in 1995, and in Asia and Russia during 1998, showed
once more that IMF funds are now unequal to the vast amounts of
private capital circulating in the world economy. In November 1998
it agreed a rescue package for the Brazilian economy that helped to
forestall the threat of a global financial collapse due to economic
turbulence in Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere.
The board of governors, made up of leading monetary
officials from each of the member nations, is the highest authority in
the IMF. Day-to-day operations are the responsibility of the 24-
member executive board, which represents member nations
individually (for larger countries) or in groups. The managing
director chairs the executive board. Main headquarters is in
Washington, D.C.
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Taxation
System of compulsory contributions levied by a government
or other qualified public body on people, corporations, and property,
in order to fund public expenditure. In deciding whom, what, and
how much to tax, all governments have economic and social
objectives. Some types of business activity or product, such as
cigarettes, may be discouraged by heavy taxes. Other businesses,
such as those operating in depressed areas, may be encouraged by
tax breaks. Or taxation may be used to bring about social reforms
through altering the distribution of wealth.
The effectiveness of any government, at central or local
level, depends on the willingness of the people governed to surrender
or exchange a measure of control over property in return for
protection and other services. Taxation is one form of this exchange.
In medieval times, taxes were customarily paid not in money
but in the form of labour or other payments in kind (such as work on
local roads or supplies of grain or other farm produce). As long as
the government’s services consisted largely of military actions and
the provision of roads and other public works, this form of taxation
satisfied most governmental needs reasonably well. Rulers could
require feudal lords to provide, as a form of tax, workers or soldiers
in numbers that reflected the noble’s rank and wealth. In the same
manner, grain levies could be imposed on landowners, both to feed
the workers or troops and to provide for other government needs. In
modern industrial nations, although taxes are levied in terms of
money, the fundamental pattern remains: the government designates
a tax base (such as income, property holdings, or a given
commodity); applies a tax-rate structure to the base; and collects the
tax (equal to the base multiplied by the applicable rate) from the
stipulated legal taxpayer.
Tax systems, even today, are as varied as the nations that
devise them, ranging in complexity from the most basic
arrangements to computerized revenue systems. Simple tax
mechanisms are suitable only to the needs of those governments that
are extremely limited in scope. When government responsibilities are
extensive and diverse (as, for example, when taxes are used to
modify economic inequalities and to distribute benefits in ways that
are considered equitable), the underlying system of taxes must be
sophisticated. Elaborate networks of fiscal reporting become
 198
essential, as do legal enforcement and a standard of public education
adequate to ensure a high degree of taxpayer compliance.
Tax systems perform differing functions, depending on the
responsibilities expected of the enacting government. Local
governments traditionally depend most heavily on property taxes,
and central governments on sales taxes and income taxes. Local
governments are required to keep their expenditures within the
budgetary limits, determined by their own revenues augmented by
payments received from central government, though in some
circumstances they can borrow money. The central government,
however, can borrow or even create money; it does not have to raise
enough from its tax system to balance its budget. Taxation is also the
basic instrument of fiscal policy. In concert with its control over the
money supply (that is, its monetary policy), the government aims to
maintain the stability of the economy. In depressions, for example,
taxes may be lowered and budget deficits incurred so that consumers
will have money to buy goods and investors will have capital to put
into industry, thus stimulating production. In prosperous times, tax
increases may be needed to hold down or prevent the inflation
caused by too much money chasing too few goods, or if the
government prefers to control inflation through interest rates, taxes
may be cut for political or other ends.
Among the tax systems of different nations, wide variations
exist in how money is raised and spent. Tax and expenditure policies
reveal the fundamental ideology of a government and a political
system. Most democracies today derive their general notions of what
constitutes a good tax system from four principles enunciated in the
18th century by the Scottish economist Adam Smith.
Fairness Of fundamental importance is that any tax must be
fair—that is, citizens should be taxed in proportion to their abilities
to pay (a concept that Smith defined somewhat ambiguously as “in
proportion to the benefit they derive from the government”). A tax is
considered fair if those who have the means to pay are assessed
either in proportion to their capacity to pay or, depending on the
situation, in proportion to what they receive from the government.
Both “ability to pay” and “benefits received”, therefore, are criteria
of fairness. When government services confer identifiable personal
benefits on some individuals and not on others, and when it is
feasible to expect the users to bear a reasonable part of the cost,
financing the benefits, at least partly, by taxing the people who
benefit is considered fair, as in the repayment of loans to students by
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subsequent taxation. (Obviously, this method does not apply to such
services as public welfare payments.) Taxation in accordance with
appropriately applied standards of ability to pay or of benefits
received is said to meet the requirements of vertical equity (because
such taxation exacts different amounts from people in different
situations). Just as important is horizontal equity—the principle that
people who are equally able to pay and who benefit equally should
be taxed equally.
The application of a tax should be clear and certain. This
principle, considered very important by Smith, has often been
underestimated in modern tax systems (in which open and impartial
administration usually can be taken for granted). Where the
application of taxes is uncertain and arbitrary, however, the public
can have no confidence in the system. The old British tax on
numbers of house windows was disliked and widely resisted partly
because its rationale was unclear; likewise, windfall taxes introduced
by a government on gains produced by the policies of a previous
government can appear uncertain.
Taxes should be easy to calculate and collect. Compliance
with income tax laws increased dramatically where a system of
deducting tax from earnings before they are paid has been
introduced.
A good tax system should be structured so that it can be
administered efficiently and economically. Taxes that are costly or
difficult to administer divert resources to non-productive uses and
diminish confidence in both the levy and the government. Worse
still, waste can also be created by excessive tax rates; economic
efforts are then shunted from high- into low-yielding activities, from
productive enterprises into tax shelters, and from open, above-board
transactions into hidden, off-the-record participation in the
underground economy. When this happens, the important principle
of tax neutrality (which maintains that a tax should not cause people
to change their economic behaviour), implied by Smith, is violated.
Smith’s tax maxims have stood the test of time remarkably well.
Other basic principles have been added to the list, but some have
occasionally been proven counter-productive. An example is the
desirability of tax elasticity—that is, the automatic response of taxes
to changing economic conditions without adjustments in tax rates.
In designing tax systems, governments customarily consider
three basic indicators of taxpayer wealth or ability to pay: what
people own, what they spend, and what they earn. Historically,
 200
agriculture, as the fundamental basis of the subsistence economy,
became the earliest lucrative tax base. Thus, among major revenue
sources, the property tax on land and its produce is the oldest of
modern taxes.
Movable property was somewhat harder to tap as a source of
taxation, but as market places developed, taxes on the sale or transfer
of goods became productive sources of revenue. International
commerce gave rise to customs duties, levied both to yield revenue
and to control the amount and kind of imported merchandise.
Domestic trade spawned a variety of taxes, ranging from excises on
specific commodities (such as the ancient salt tax) to levies aimed at
taxing designated transactions. An example of the latter, still widely
used in some parts of the world, is the stamp tax on bills of sale and
other legal and financial documents. (The stamp tax levied by the
British government on American colonists became so prominent as a
symbol of tyranny—of “taxation without representation”—that it
helped trigger the American War of Independence.) Also widely
used today are excise taxes of many kinds, especially on luxury
items and on goods such as alcohol and cigarettes, the use of which
governments wish to regulate. Many countries levy sales taxes at the
retail level. To lighten the burden on the poor, countries exempt
necessities such as food and prescription drugs. European Union
countries use a value added tax, levied on goods and services, at each
stage of production, on the value added at that stage.
Although the value added tax is comparatively new, taxes on what
people own, buy, transfer, or use have a far longer history than do
taxes on what people earn or otherwise receive in income. A
personal income tax was first used in Britain in 1799. It was dropped
for a time and then revived, and has been in continuous use in Britain
since 1842. Because an individual income tax is complex and
difficult to administer, this kind of tax was slow to take hold. By the
end of the 19th century, however, a number of countries in Europe
and elsewhere had adopted it. In the United States, the 16th
Amendment to the Constitution (ratified in 1913) was needed to
establish the legality of a federally imposed income tax.
Because no single form of wealth is a perfect indicator of
taxpayer ability to pay, most modern nations try to diversify their tax
systems. Many people think of ability to pay largely in terms of
income. This assumption, however, is losing ground as the inequities
in modern income tax systems become increasingly apparent.
Inheritance tax on bequeathed wealth has also come under
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considerable criticism. A comprehensive form of taxation on
consumption expenditures has gained support among tax specialists,
but public acceptance has been lacking.
No tax is levied with perfect evenness or on a completely
comprehensive base; its burden inevitably falls more heavily on
some taxpayers than on others: this unfortunate fact exacerbates the
basic unpopularity of taxes per se. The exemptions, exceptions, and
other loopholes in tax laws are partly the result of humanitarian
concern for those who might be overburdened; partly, they reflect
political pressures; and partly, they come from administrative
inefficiency or inability to deal with the extremely complex tax
structure, or to foresee all possibilities for tax evasion. By using a
variety of taxes, governments can attempt to ensure that the tax
burden falls fairly across all taxpayers.
As governments find it ever harder to finance all their
commitments, and as taxpayers grow ever more resentful of the taxes
they are asked to pay, interest has grown in levies designed to
achieve fairness in terms of benefits received. Aside from simple
user charges such as those on public leisure amenities (which may be
thought of more as prices than as taxes), the benefits standard is
apparent in many major levies. These include petrol taxes that are
earmarked principally for road maintenance and construction;
business levies collected to provide unemployment insurance; and
social security taxes allocated to worker casualty-insurance and
retirement funds. The effectiveness of earmarking is a much disputed
issue, but it tends to appeal to politicians, though in fact all revenues
are generally pooled regardless of notional earmarking. Although
earmarking can make raising new revenue easier, it can also create
budgetary distortions, especially in times of economic stress, when
the general fund may be in need while special funds are more than
adequately filled.
The effects of taxation are difficult to judge. Even personal
income tax, which is presumed to fall entirely on the legal taxpayer,
has indirect consequences in the economy; it influences decisions to
work, save, and invest, and these decisions affect other people.
Corporate income tax may in some cases simply result in lower
corporate profits and dividends; in other cases, it may broadly reduce
the incomes of all owners of property and businesses. To the extent
that corporations compensate for the tax by raising the prices of their
products, the tax burden may simply be shifted on to consumers. To
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the extent that tax-reduced corporate profit margins hold down
wages, the incidence of the tax is shifted backwards to workers.
Similar disagreements arise over the incidence of local
property taxes and over the employers’ share of social security
payroll taxes. Even the long-established view that retail sales taxes
are shifted forward from retailers to consumers is challenged in a
world in which wages and government transfers (that is, income
payments such as social security) are indexed, or automatically
adjusted upward, for inflation. Inclusion of the sales tax in the Retail
Price Index insulates recipients of indexed incomes against inflation-
induced tax increases and therefore puts the burden of those
increases on the recipients of non-indexed incomes. As awareness
grows of the difficulties in pinning down the burden patterns of
various taxes, the old distinction between direct and indirect taxes
becomes relatively meaningless.
Despite the difficulties of precise measurement, governments
are appropriately concerned with the vertical pattern of the tax
burden: does it fall proportionately more heavily on the rich than on
the poor (progressive taxation)? Does it burden everyone to the same
degree in relation to taxpaying ability (proportional taxation)? Or
does it place a relatively heavier burden on the poor (regressive
taxation)? In most modern nations, a generally progressive tax
structure is considered desirable for two reasons. First, a progressive
tax is considered more equitable (because the wealthy have more
ability to pay). Second, extremes of wealth and poverty are
considered injurious to the economic and social well-being of a
society, and a progressive tax structure tends to moderate such
extremes.
On the other hand, tax rates that are too progressive—that
rise too steeply—may discourage both work and investment by
removing much of the reward. In the early 1980s concern about this
problem attracted the attention of policymakers to so-called supply-
side economics—to economic theories emphasizing the importance
of ensuring that taxes do not drain away incentives to investment,
either by individuals or by businesses.
In the system of feudalism that dominated Western Europe
during the Middle Ages, lords gave land and protection to their
subjects, called vassals, in exchange for military service, taxes, and
dues from the vassals. In this undated drawing, a vassal brings a tax
payment to his lord.
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Taliban
Islamic fundamentalist movement in Afghanistan and
unofficial government of most of the country since 1996. The
Taliban movement was created in August 1994 by a senior mullah,
Muhammad Omar Akhund, in the southern Afghan town of
Kandahâr. The name “Taliban”, meaning “student”, supposedly
refers to the group’s origins, although most members have known
war all their lives and consequently have been students only for
rudimentary religious training.
The Taliban movement emerged out of the chaos and
uncertainty of the Afghan-Soviet conflict of 1979-1988, and
subsequent internal civil strife in Afghanistan. During the 1980s
Afghanistan was occupied by Soviet troops and thereafter ruled by a
Soviet-backed government. Afghanistan’s long war with the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and its Afghan puppet
government was largely fought by mujahedin (guerrilla) factions
with military assistance from the United States; Pakistan also
provided places of refuge, military training, and other support.
After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, civil war broke out between the
mujahedin factions and the central government. Afghanistan’s
central government had long been dominated by the country’s
majority ethnic group, the Pashtuns, but after Soviet withdrawal, a
coalition government that included Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, and
other minority groups came to power. The Taliban, which emerged
as a mujahedin faction, consisted mostly of Pashtuns intent on once
again dominating the central government in Kabul. They were
trained and armed by the Frontier Constabulary, a quasi-military unit
in Pakistan, which also has a significant Pashtun population. The
Taliban promoted itself as a new force for peace and unity, and many
Afghans, particularly fellow Pashtuns, supported the Taliban in
hopes of respite from years of war.
In late 1994 and early 1995, the Taliban moved through the
south and west of Afghanistan, taking control of Kandahâr and many
other towns and cities dominated by fellow Pashtuns. Herât and most
of the other towns along the main southern and western highway
soon followed. In February 1995 the Taliban reached the outskirts of
Kabul, but were ousted by government forces in March. Again they
advanced to the capital in October. While continuing to bombard
Kabul, Taliban soldiers advanced and took control of eastern
Afghanistan, as well as the remote central area.
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The Taliban continued their siege of Kabul intermittently
throughout 1996, until they were able to advance in September 1996
and capture the city. Government troops fled as Pashtun control was
once again restored to the capital. Shortly after the city fell to the
Taliban, Muhammad Najibullah, the last Soviet-backed president of
the country, and his brother, the security chief Shahpur Ahmadzai,
both of whom had taken refuge in the UN compound in Kabul in
1992, were dragged out by Taliban soldiers, beaten, shot, and hanged
in a public area.
After taking over Kabul, the Taliban created a government
agency, called the Ministry for Ordering What is Right and
Forbidding What is Wrong, to enforce its fundamentalist rules of
behaviour. Some of these rules had little to do with Islamic Shari’ah
law, however, and were more influenced by ancient Pashtun tribal
beliefs. Taliban leaders banned music, shut down cinemas and
burned the films, and bulldozed bottles and cans of alcohol taken
from foreign hotels. Men were ordered to grow full, untrimmed
beards (in accordance with orthodox Islam), and were rounded up
and beaten with sticks in an effort to force prayer in the mosques.
Women were told to cover themselves from head to toe in burkas
(long veils covering the whole body) with woven, dark screens in
front of the eyes; improperly dressed women were beaten. Girls’
schools were closed, and women were forbidden to work outside
their homes. As a result, hospitals lost almost all their staff and
children in orphanages were abandoned. In a country where
hundreds of thousands of men had been killed in warfare, widows,
who were the sole sources of income for their families, found
themselves unable to work.
The Taliban continued to announce additional rules and
laws, using Radio Kabul, and trucks equipped with loudspeakers.
The Taliban made murder, adultery, and drug dealing punishable by
death, and allowed stonings, some of which have been fatal, of
women escorted by men who are not related to them. Other rules
enforced by the Taliban include the punishment of theft by
amputation of the hand. Many of these laws have alarmed human-
rights groups and provoked worldwide condemnation. Even Iran has
censured the Taliban’s excesses in the name of Islam.
The Taliban’s rapid takeover of Kabul in September 1996
paved the way for their conquest of the rest of the country, as
Taliban soldiers advanced north to the mountain strongholds of the
Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras. President Burhanuddin Rabbani and
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Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar fled when the Taliban took
over the capital, remaining in the northern part of the country and
fighting the Taliban alongside other factions. In November 1996 the
Taliban were driven back toward Kabul. Sporadic fighting between
the Taliban and the northern factions reached a stalemate in early
1997 with all but northern Afghanistan under Taliban rule. However,
by mid-1997 the Taliban had captured some of the northern area,
thus bringing most of Afghanistan under their control. Thousands of
refugees streamed into UN-supported camps outside Herât. Despite
concerns over human rights abuses, particularly against women, the
UN, and also the United States and other countries, have held
diplomatic talks with the Taliban in an effort to restore peace to the
area.