To Hang Or Not To Hang

By Amir Zia
The News
October 30, 2012

Terrorists, murderers, kidnappers, robbers, narcotics’ smugglers and rapists are among the main beneficiaries of the government’s “pro-human rights stance,” which ironically added another contradiction and dichotomy in the country’s dysfunctional prosecution and legal system.

On October 10, key national dailies carried advertisements sponsored by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), urging the government to abolish the death penalty. The advertisements were meant to mark the international day against the irreversible capital sentence, which has been scrapped by around 140 countries across the world.
The same day, news of the assassination bid on 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai, in which she and two of her friends were wounded, dominated the national and international media. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) – responsible for killing thousands of civilians and security personnel in recent years – was quick to take responsibility for the attack that shook the entire nation. The child was deemed fit for murder under the TTP’s controversial interpretation of Islam because she was seen as a collaborator of the United States by the so-called holy warriors.
With other reports of murders and routine crime that day, this newspaper also carried a small news item of vigilante justice on its Karachi pages – a report on a mob killing a suspected robber with sticks and iron rods. In recent years, there have been several such incidents in the country in which angry mobs spontaneously dispensed punishment to the alleged criminals. Reports of people killing under-trial suspects inside court premises to avenge alleged murders or the kidnappings of women also remain a common phenomenon.
The key reason for such outrage underlines the bitter reality that many people do not see justice taking its due course. Street wisdom says that even heinous crimes go unpunished in most cases as poor investigation and lack of evidence weaken the prosecution, which remains unable to prove the guilt beyond the shadow of a doubt. Justice is not just delayed, but denied. Yes, the proverbial long arms of the law often prove too weak when money, power and threats swing into action.
Therefore, many people prefer to settle scores on their own. Our society’s deep-rooted feudal and tribal system and its code of honour glorify private vendetta. This trend is restricted not just to rural areas, but has its buyers in urban centres as well. The situation has been further complicated thanks to the ill-conceived moratorium on executions by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)-led government since early 2008 in a country where more than 16,000 people have been killed in sectarian, religious, political and ethnic-related violence and terrorism during this period.
Terrorists, murderers, kidnappers, robbers, narcotics’ smugglers and rapists are among the main beneficiaries of the government’s “pro-human rights stance,” which ironically added another contradiction and dichotomy in the country’s dysfunctional prosecution and legal system.
No wonder Pakistani prisons now boast the world’s highest population of death-row convicts, numbering more than 8,000. The government stopped prison authorities from executing the court orders, but did nothing to remove the self-created contradiction in the law and its practice.
A close aide of President Asif Ali Zardari – who under the constitution wields power “to grant pardon, reprieve, respite, remit, suspend or commute any sentence passed by any court, tribunal or other authority,” – admits that the moratorium provide the two parties, the victim and the perpetuator of a crime, time for rapprochement. In a nut-shell, the state’s inaction gives a chance to the convict to pressurise the victims or their families to make deals through threat or lure of money.
The Islamic laws of Qisas and Diyat – originally conceived by former military ruler Gen Ziaul Haq – are often misused to help convicts buy freedom. The government, instead of fixing the flaws of the investigation, and the prosecution and legal systems to ensure speedy justice, has adopted a controversial way to appease the small section of rights activists and the European Union, which are at the forefront of the anti-death penalty campaign.
The government, however, is unable to fulfill the demand of abolishing the death penalty, which can be granted on 27 crimes under Pakistani law. The main reason: resistance from Islamic parties that see any such move as being in violation to Islam, and a bitter opposition by three provincial governments – barring the Sindh government. As a result, the country now has a hotchpotch system under which the death penalty exists only on paper – at least as long as this government stays in power.
The inconsistency in the law and its practice is fuelling lawlessness, crime and terrorism as the state remains unable to prosecute cases against known killers and terrorists and unwilling to move against convicts already given death sentences. Many legal and security experts believe that the capital punishment serves as a key deterrent to crime, though rights activists say that the state has no right to inflict irreversible punishment, which they argue is mostly given to the poor after prolonged legal process – often lasting for a decade or more. They argue that corruption and a flawed investigation system deprive a citizen of fundamental right to life without conclusively establishing the guilt.
But should criminals get blanket cover due to flaws in a system? Why not make it just and efficient so that any person – regardless of class or social background – gets equal treatment under the law. The local anti-death penalty campaigners and their foreign allies fail to take into account Pakistan’s objective conditions, which make it a very different case from those countries that banned this practice.
These differences are not just at the level of development, education and historical evolution, but also due to the erosion of the state writ in recent years and the rise of private militias and the armed groups, which are now directly confronting and undermining the state.
In a country where the life, property and honour of law-abiding citizens remain unsafe, it may look absurd to many to hear voices demanding a European Union-like compassionate approach in dealing with perpetuators of atrocious crimes and terrorism. Certainly, the countries that have abolished the death penalty do not witness 16,000 killings in political, ethnic, religious and terrorist violence in just four years. In their part of the world, militants do not shoot girls for demanding education or brainwash children to become suicide bombers.
What Pakistan requires is the implementation of laws. Any attempts to further blunt an already inefficient justice system will result in more chaos and lawlessness. Sometimes in history, even bad laws are considered better than lawlessness. Today’s Pakistan has slipped into this very abyss of disorder and turmoil and needs effective implementation of laws on a war footing.
One should not doubt the sincerity of human rights activists, but unfortunately the time for their “Great Idea” has not come yet in this land of the pure where any opinion poll will show that the majority want perpetuators of heinous crime taken to task. The sooner the government realises this and takes a stand for the supremacy of the law, the better for the people and the country.

Review: Tilism-e-Hoshruba

By Amir Zia
Newsline
September, 2012

The Arab ladies, as pointed out by veteran critic Aziz Ahmed, “were probably hidden behind the seven veils” and no one could even cast an evil eye on them. However, their chivalrous men, despite having several wives, habitually risked their neck for a ka’afir beauty

Long before the wizard-boy Harry Potter cast his magic spell on readers across the globe, long before the half-man, half-god teenager, Percy Jackson, became an instant hit with youngsters as he battled monsters and demons from the Greek mythology in a modern-day setting, Urdu, our very own language too had produced grander and far more colourful masterpieces of fantasy, replete with magical wonderlands and heroics which kept generation after generation mesmerised.

While today’s Potter and Jackson belong to the realm of children’s literature, the magical world of fantasies in the Urdu language, known as dastans, were intended for adult listeners and readers. Considered the foremost among them is the adventures of the Arab warrior, Ameer Hamza and his friend, Umroo Aayar, a master trickster and spy. Hamza, his sons, grandsons and friends fought mighty kings, warriors, sorcerers, demons and jinns in a vast epic spread over 46 volumes, 42,000 pages and comprising at least 25 million words.

In the early 1970s, Ferozsons Limited did a commendable job of publishing abridged and simplified editions of this epic tale in two separate series comprising 10 volumes each, titled Dastan-e-Ameer Hamza and Tilism-e-Hoshruba. These books are still available at select book stores, but they are no longer the rage as they were among children growing up in the ’70s and the ’80s. Globalisation has shrunk the space for our local tales and heroes. It is now only imported heroes that are firing the imagination of most of our children who belong to the middle and upper middle classes – at least in the key urban centres. This stands in stark contrast to the past when Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and Secret Seven and the classic tales, The Three Musketeers and The Adventures of Robin Hood had to compete with local heroes, from the beggar boy, Mungoo, to the Pakistani war hero, Shaheen.

However, even in the ’70s and ’80s, a decent print of the original Dastan-e-Ameer Hamza was difficult to find. What was mostly available in those days were cheap, badly printed one-volume editions of Dastan, which were by no means a collector’s item. The binding was poor and the pages would unfurl no matter how carefully you handled them. The good editions – if available – were beyond the reach of my pocket.

Fortunately, Oxford University Press (OUP) has recently published some of the long lost original Urdu classics that include the first volume of Tilism-e-Hoshruba in three parts in hard-back editions. The original nine-volume Tilism-e-Hoshruba, of which the first four were written by one of Urdu’s greatest prose stylists and poet Muhammad Husain Jah and the rest by his contemporary Ahmed Hussain Qamar at the close of the 19th Century, is part of the 46-volume Dastan-e-Ameer Hamza.

Many readers treat the two as separate tales, but they are part of the orginal Dastan-e-Ameer Hamza as we are informed in the preface of Tilism’s first part, written by eminent Indian critic Shams-ur Rahman Faruqi, who is also the series editor. Ajmal Kamal’s name features as copy editor.

Jah penned Tilism with the help of the oral narrative and transcriptions of professional dastan-gos (storytellers) in the last quarter of the 19th century. But its roots, according to the eminent critic Mohammad Hasan Askari, go back to the times of Mughal Emperor Akbar in 16th century Hindustan, when it was reportedly written in Persian by Faizi.

The OUP’s three-part edition of the first volume of Tilism has been edited in line with the modern syntax of the language, which means paragraphs, full-stops and commas have been introduced to facilitate the reader. In the original work, there was hardly any concept of such luxuries. The flowery text is heavily Persianised and loaded with Sanskrit words and heavy doses of poetry, which might be off-putting for many of the present readers who even find Urdu works of contemporary satirist and humourist Mushtaq Ahmed Yusufi difficult to comprehend. Unfortunately, our burgeoning private schools make no attempt to introduce some of Urdu’s finest literary work to their students. That aside, OUP would have done a great service, had it introduced a glossary of difficult and now dead words and their meanings on every page in the Tilisim reprint. It would have helped contemporary readers to comprehend and appreciate its text.

But, frankly speaking, the barrier of heavily Persianised Urdu is swept away when one gets hooked to the story, its colourful narrative, its larger-than-life characters, details of a bygone era, the world of bewitching beauties, sordid desires, chivalry, wars and magic. There are stories within the main story in which handsome princes often meet charming sorcerers or princesses and fall in love at first sight. Naturally, the heroes were from the camp of the Arab warrior, Hamza, and the leading ladies, ever ready to die for them, came from the enemy camp of the kufa’ar, Laqa, who had declared himself god, and his follower king, Afrasayab Jadu, who ruled the Tilism Hoshruba.

The Arab ladies, as pointed out by veteran critic Aziz Ahmed, “were probably hidden behind the seven veils” and no one could even cast an evil eye on them. However, their chivalrous men, despite having several wives, habitually risked their neck for a ka’afir beauty. Very often, they landed themselves in trouble and had to be rescued by tricksters and spies (aayars), who could change guise at the drop of a hat. Yes, the heroes were no match for the wizards and witches of Tilism-e-Hoshurba; it was these aayars, including the king of them all, Umroo Aayar, who could defeat them through deceit and guile and, that too, mostly in the guise of pretty women. No wonder women dominate Tilism – both as evil protagonists, as well as virtuous heroines.

Behind the side-stories of love and lust, the central theme of the epic remains Hamza’s efforts to vanquish Laqa and his followers. And as he confronts the might of Laqa and his allies at Kohistan, he sends one of his grandsons, Asad, and five tricksters, led by Umroo Aayar to Tilism-e-Hoshruba along with an army, which incidentally vanishes at the very start of his campaign. Asad, too, is imprisoned at a later stage, and eventually, it is these aayars, who with the help of dissident wizards and sorceresses, challenge and weaken Afrasayab Jadu.

The river of flowing blood (Darya-e-Khoon Rawan), the flying claws and thrones, the limitless variety of magical weapons spitting fire, stones and arrows, or making opponents insane or motionless, the invisibility blanket of Umroo Aayar, his melodious voice, his ability to transform himself into any person thanks to the blessings of saints and prophets, his boundless greed, his small bag, zambeel, a gift from a saint which could carry the world’s treasures in it – they all stay in the reader’s mind. As do the details of preparation before every war, the conflict itself, the revelries, merrymaking and festivities which follow every battle – and then suddenly, all this vanishes as rival forces strike back, leaving the place of joy splattered with blood, bodies and wailing men and women.
OUP has done Urdu and its followers a commendable service by printing this hard-to-find treasure of yesteryear. Let’s hope the remaining volumes of this masterpiece will be printed sooner rather than later.

Our Collective Sin

By Amir Zia
The News
October 16, 2012

Our collective sin remains that we waited far too long and did little when all these years the Taliban had been busy blowing up schools in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, brainwashing and preparing child suicide bombers and using Pakistani soil for terrorism not just within the country but also in other parts of the world.

A text message from the banned Hizb-ut-Tahrir – circulated among many media persons this week – blamed the “Raymond Davis network” for the attack on Malala Yousafzai by which it implied that the US spy agency was involved in the affair. Many mainstream religious parties – from the Jamaat-e-Islami to the various factions of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) – instead of condemning the ghastly assault on the 14-year-old girl from Swat, tried to spin it by saying that it was the result of the US-led war in Afghanistan and its drone strikes on Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas. A leader of a prominent religious party had the audacity to say in a television talk-show that the attack was a reaction to the way the government, the media and non-government organisations (NGOs) used Malala against the Taliban.

While the majority of ordinary Pakistanis have put their hearts and souls in praying for Malala’s life and condemning the perpetrators of the attack, the religious forces today stand exposed by not condemning the Taliban who tried to silence this young voice pleading the case of girls’ education in her hometown and taking a position against the systematic destruction of schools by militants.

The JUI chief, Maulana Fazlur Rehman said in a menacing tone that all statements slamming clerics and religious leaders for not denouncing the Taliban militants are being noted. According to media reports that quote intelligence sources, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is planning action against national and international media houses, following which the Interior Ministry beefed up their security.

Despite efforts by the fundamentalist forces to confuse the issue and link it with the war in Afghanistan and drone attacks, there remains a clarity and level-headedness among ordinary Pakistanis, who find targeting a child, for whatever so-called lofty ideals, unacceptable.

Indeed, Malala has become a symbol of defiance against the barbarism and atrocities the Taliban and their Al-Qaeda allies have been committing using the sacred name of Islam, which preaches kindness, forgiveness, moderation, and tolerance even in conflict and war. But this fundamental message of Islam seems to have been forgotten by militants and their cheerleaders in the rightwing and religious parties, who represent the triumph of all that is unreasonable and unjust over reason and justice. Their emotional arguments and violent deeds generate heat, but unfortunately no light.

Our collective sin remains that we waited far too long and did little when all these years the Taliban had been busy blowing up schools in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, brainwashing and preparing child suicide bombers and using Pakistani soil for terrorism not just within the country but also in other parts of the world.

The silence of the majority, the failure of mainstream political parties and the government in countering the self-defeating narrative of the Taliban, and the half-hearted measures of the security forces in fighting terrorism have led to Malala’s current ordeal. She represents all the tens of thousands of students who missed valuable academic years because their schools were destroyed by these self-styled “holy warriors”. She is the face of all those children who were killed, maimed or injured in terrorist attacks that have remained “part of our lives” for more than a decade now. She is the emblem of all those who carry the trauma and scars of losing their near and dear ones at the hands of the Taliban.

The extremist mindset attacked a potent symbol of defiance by targeting and wounding Malala and two other female students – Kainat and Shazia. Before shooting and wounding these girls, the so-called brave and pious Taliban completely destroyed 121 schools in Malala’s hometown of Swat and partially damaged 280 others, according to a report issued last month by the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (Sparc). The total number of schools destroyed in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, according to the report, remains more than 700, depriving at least 600,000 children of education.

When all this was happening, we, the majority chose to remain silent or pay lip service to mark our indignation at these horrendous acts amidst the crescendo of voices raised by the Taliban apologists, supporters and ideological backers, who justified and defended every crime and every madness committed in the name of our religion on the pretext that the war against terrorism and extremism was not our war.

The Imran Khans, Maulana Fazal-ur Rehmans and Munawar Hasans of this world tried to thrive and score points by confusing the homegrown challenge of extremism and terrorism by justifying that it was a mere reaction to the foreign intervention in Afghanistan and drone strikes in Pakistan. They conveniently forgot the circumstances that led to this intervention. Their half-truths, conspiracy theories and deliberate distortion of facts always fail to take into account that the region serves as a safe-haven for all shades of local, regional and international militants who threaten Pakistan by trying to impose their harsh brand of Islam and use its soil to carry out terrorist activities around the world. The footprints of many international terrorist plots led directly to our doorstep. Pakistan paid a far higher price compared with any other country at the hands of extremists.

Our inability to establish writ of the state in the tribal region and parts of northern Pakistan – infested by local and foreign militants – remained one of the key failures. We tried half-hearted crackdowns, devoid of ideological support from the mainstream political parties. We failed in giving a popular counter-narrative to challenge the Taliban and Al-Qaeda’s distorted version of Islam. Instead, the authorities kept moving between the two extremes of military operations or striking deals with commander this and commander that. But the policy of appeasement failed to curb militancy.

Our class-based and multi-tiered education system, which excludes poor children from modern schooling, is other mega factor responsible for the growing intolerance and extremism. The children of the poor are mostly left at the mercy of antiquated seminaries, run on donations and alms. Despite many announcements, we failed to reform these seminaries or provide a better alternative to their students as the state abdicated its responsibility of providing education. The worldview of the seminary students stands in stark contrast to the children belonging to the privileged and middle classes, who attend fancy private English-medium school. Thus we created and accepted an ever-widening divide, which alienated one world from the other, creating all the right conditions for a conflict.

The state needs to take a holistic approach when dealing with the challenge of extremism that is bent upon destroying the very fabric of our society. Any counter-terrorism strategy needs to be backed by an ideological narrative in which the political parties and the civil society have a crucial role to play. Reforming the education system, and ensuring it provides equal opportunities to students of all classes – both in the rural and urban centres of Pakistan – should be one of its main pillars. That’s what Malala stood for. And that’s what we must stand for – if we love our children and care for the future of Pakistan. If we fail to act now, we will all have to pay the price. 

Political Maturity Not Weakness

By Amir Zia
The News On Sunday
October 7, 2012

The PPP-MQM duo will have to remain persistent and ride through the patchy waters to make the nascent local government system work

The minor stakeholders in the Sindh Assembly and small nationalist groups are all out to whip-up emotions and raise a storm over the swift approval of the local government bill on October 1 by the treasury benches. Only 13 members in the 168-member house opposed the bill, which was passed with a thumping two-third majority by the ruling Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) and its key ally the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) more than three weeks after it was promulgated as an Ordinance.

Some political pundits predict that the new local government system would increase ethnic and political polarisation in an already troubled province where political assassinations, mob violence and rampant crime remain the order of the day, especially in the provincial capital of Karachi.

Others say that the opposition by the small political parties and fringe nationalist groups within and outside the assembly hardly pose a serious challenge to Sindh’s ruling coalition, which still has the support of more than 140 members in the provincial assembly despite the defection of its minor allies including the Awami National Party, the Pakistan Muslim League (F) and the National Peoples’ Party.

But the new system, christened as the Sindh People’s Local Government (SPLG) Act, 2012, has certainly triggered a heated debate and resulted in partial strikes and minor protests in parts of Sindh that is seen to have a potential to snowball into an explosive issue amid allegations by the nationalist and opposition parties — that it is aimed to divide the province.

This criticism, however, appears more emotional and political than going into the nitty-gritty of the new system, identifying its flaws and suggesting improvements.

Under the SPLG, out of 23 districts in Sindh, five urban centres — Karachi, Hyderabad, Larkana, Sukkar and Mirpurkhas — have been declared for the first time as Metropolitan Corporations, headed by mayors and deputy mayors. Earlier, Karachi used to be the only Metropolitan Corporation in Sindh. This reflects the growing urbanisation in Sindh and a right step to manage the challenges of major and secondary cities.

Under the new system, the remaining 18 districts of Sindh will be led by chairmen and their deputies, having same functions and administrative and financial powers as that of their urban counterparts.

By-and-large, the structure of the new system is akin to that of former military ruler Pervez Musharraf era’s local government, though fairly diluted in terms of certain powers.

The SPLG ensured that commissioners and deputy commissioners continue to hold central positions in the administrative structure, which they lost under Musharraf. In health, education and excise and taxation departments, the SPLG allowed only partial devolution, while the provincial minister continues to call shots when it comes to the overall revenue collection.

What has been retained from the old system is its overall spirit of giving representation to the elected representative at the unions, taluka, town, district and metropolitan bodies’ level.

The MQM managed to prevail in ensuring that Karachi be treated as one district comprising 18 towns and 178 union councils. It will bring more than 2,300 elected representatives to serve their respective constituencies with equal powers and financial resources. These representatives will come from different ethnic backgrounds and party affiliations, depending on the demography and political leanings of their voters, who will be able to hold them accountable in much more effective manner.

Overall in Sindh, there will be more than 10,000 such representatives addressing the day-to-day civic issues and infrastructure challenges, which in no way should fall under the ambit of provincial and national assembly legislatures, who have a different constitutional role to perform and practically remain beyond the reach of majority of the people.

The MQM wanted the PPP to revert back to the Musharraf-era system in totality. This demand was unacceptable to the PPP, which saw it infringing upon many powers of the provincial government.

The long stalemate over the issue remained the main bone of contention between these two major parties of Sindh straining their ties during the last two-and-a-half years. Neither side budged from its stated positions during the countless rounds of talks, but the alliance was saved from an imminent collapse following direct intervention from President Asif Ali Zardari and MQM leader Altaf Hussain. As a result, both sides conceded ground and introduced a local government system that has been prepared by the political parties under a democratic order. In the past, it was mostly the military rulers who pushed the local bodies system to fill in the vacuum of elected representatives at the provincial and federal level.

The give-and-take by the two biggest political parties of Sindh on local bodies system and developing a consensus should be seen as a healthy sign for the country’s frail democratic system.

The very fact that the PPP could have any bill passed by a simple majority with its 90 plus lawmakers in Sindh Assembly, but it chose to keep minority partner on board despite pressure from hardliners, underlines political maturity and not a weakness.

Similarly, the MQM leadership too faced demands from within the party to pull out of its uneasy relationship with the PPP, but its central leaders particularly Altaf Hussain managed to keep the partnership going.

This bodes well for the multi-ethnic province as an outright PPP-MQM clash would have aggravated the law and order problem, particularly in Karachi where the coalition government keeps a dismal track record in curbing crime and political-cum-criminal mafias, which have penetrated their own rank-and-file.

While these two major stakeholders of Sindh need to improve performance manifold when it comes to maintaining peace and rule of law in their domain, the very fact that they continued to share power is no small feat, given their apparent conflicting political and financial stakes in the province.

On principle, few can argue that huge urban centres like Karachi could be run without an effective local government system. No big city in the world has the concept of being administrated in the absence of a powerful mayor and local government system. The same remains true for other major urban centres of Sindh where effective local government system would help address the basic civic, development and infrastructure issues in a more efficient manner.

Even small towns and villages need local representatives who have a hands-on approach on these issues. This is how the system works in most democracies of the world. But here in Pakistan, it is unfortunate that for short-term tactical political advantages, local government system is being opposed by creating an issue out of non-issue and fanning conspiracy theories that the move is aimed at dividing the province.

The majority parties have every right to legislate, which is the true spirit of democracy. They can ignore or bring on board the smaller parties on any issue. It is their sweet will, but majority parties cannot be dictated by them.

In the rough, tough and mean world of Pakistani politics, games are seldom played by the books. Therefore, the PPP-MQM duo will have to remain persistent and ride through the patchy waters — at least in the short-run — to make their nascent local government system work.

Weaving Dreams

By Amir Zia
Money Matters
The News
October 1, 2012

Can corporate gurus and businesspeople manage to make their voices heard in the quarters that matter? The pragmatic answer is that is that in today’s world, the economic imperative dictates foreign policy. If the people, who create and multiply wealth, really mean business, they can make a difference

The contrast was stark. In the plush environs of a hotel in the historic city of Lahore, some of the best corporate minds of Pakistan and India wove dreams of creating the world’s largest common market of 1.5 billion people and discussed the opportunities afforded by the knowledge economy. Outside, frenzied protesters in Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad and Peshawar set ablaze public and private property over the making of a blasphemous film, punishing their fellow Pakistanis for the sins of one living seven seas away.

The madness on the streets and the rational discourse among the participants of the Pakistan-India Management Summit 2012 titled “Dividends” created a situation replete with irony. But the subcontinent has a long history of being buffeted by the cross winds of irrationality and rationality.

Before these corporate leaders, political giants such as Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and poet philosophers Dr. Mohammed Iqbal and Rabindranath Tagore witnessed great misery and greater madness. But since their times didn’t stop them from dreaming and striving for a better tomorrow, why should these times discourage today’s leaders from aspiring for peace, economic development and prosperity?

Correspondingly, peaceniks on both sides of the divided frontier are working furiously to keep this flame alive. With expressions of love for each other’s countries and peoples, these new leaders are talking of peace, resolving protracted issues bedeviling their relationship and breaking barriers. Crawling or with baby steps, these people are surely inching towards this goal.One such step was the first-ever Pakistan-India Management Summit held on September 20-21, which brought under one roof more than 80 top-of-the-line Indian corporate leaders and around 600 Pakistanis. The Jang Group and The Times of India led peace initiative – Aman ki Asha – partnered with the Nutshell Forum to organise this event, which was to enable participants to share their management experiences and challenges as well as establish relations on an institutional level.

Significantly, however, the participants weren’t just discussing the art of running and expanding business and investment empires. A key feature of many presentations was the vast economic potential of an engaged, cooperative and mutually supportive relationship between the two nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours. While innovation, productivity and competiveness were buzz words during discussions about creating an impact in the global markets, thought leaders simultaneously grappled with the need to balance risk and opportunity while envisioning the face of corporations of the future.

There’s a history to this dialogue. Since its launch in January 2010, Aman ki Asha has organised and supported a number of events to boost economic and trade relations, promote cultural ties and discuss thorny political issues, including that of the divided region of Kashmir. The first business conference was held in New Delhi that year; the second in Lahore this year. And this management summit helped carry forward the agenda set in the earlier two conferences by providing corporate leaders a rare opportunity to meet and exchange views.

(A critical aspect of these conferences tends to be overlooked: the presence of foreigners in Lahore. Most businesspersons and investors today are too afraid to travel to Pakistan due to threats of terrorism, soaring crime and the poor law and order situation. And the senseless violence in the wake of the blasphemous film only reinforces that sense of fear. At such a time, attracting a sizeable contingent of Indians is no small feat and it’s for this that the organisers deserve rich kudos.)

One of the dominant themes of the conference was the fact that despite their vast economic potential and enormously talented human resource pool, around 350 million people in the subcontinent live below the poverty line.

In an excellent presentation, Shiv Shivakumar, Nokia’s senior vice president for India, Middle East and Africa, argued that the major factors holding the two countries back are their slim educational and health budgets and their disproportionally high military expenditures. If there were no military expenditures, he said, some $53 billion will be freed up for expenditure on education and health in the two countries.

Interestingly, Shivakumar’s sentiments were echoed by a number of top guns of the business and financial worlds from both countries. All, in turn, underlined the futility of confrontation and high defence spending and preached the benefits of peace and amity.

The point to remember is that Pakistan and India are the not only two countries in the world, which have border disputes. However, the other countries facing similar challenges have not stopped exploring and enhancing trade and business ties. China and Taiwan, for example, managed to boost bilateral trade to more than $100 billion per annum from $8.1 billion in 1991. Even India and China, which had bilateral trade worth just $1 billion in the 1990s, have upped this number to $60 billion.

The lesson for countries like Pakistan and India, which have more in common, reason experts, is that they can increase trade by 20 to 50 times from their existing official level of $2 billion, once they open borders and start cooperating, rather than indulging in a race to the bottom in terms of restrictive trade practices. And this slogan of intra-regional trade, say these trade analysts, can boost per capita income in the two countries to a significant level from the current $1,200 in Pakistan and $1,500 in India.

There were also interesting, new ideas floated in “the assembly of the like-minded” (as one of the speakers pointed out). In a lively session conducted Dr Sunil Gupta, Chief Learning Officer of the Ideas Consulting & Lifetime Master Trainer, there came a host of suggestions for improving Pakistan-India ties. While one group of participants wanted to educate the media to ensure good relations between Pakistan and India, another wanted a joint Pakistan-India cricket team. There were suggestions regarding exchange programmes for students and teachers; the free flow of textbooks, newspapers and magazines; the holding of interfaith conferences for hardliner Muslim clerics and Hindu pundits; the issuance of ‘honeymoon visas’ and, most remarkably, a recommendation to encourage marriages between the people of the two countries.

The key issue remains, will the corporate gurus and businesspeople manage to make their voices heard in the quarters that matter? And the pragmatic answer to that is that in today’s world, the economic imperative dictates foreign policy. If the people, who create and multiply wealth, really mean business, they can make a difference. What they need is perhaps the sense of urgency to make their dreams of a common market a reality.