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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (42559)	5/10/2002 3:49:22 AM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Respond to of 50167

Pedestrian crossing By Edward Luce..FT Published: May 9 2002 15:24 Friends often suppose it must be arduous working in India. I remind them I am not here on a year off and I do not carry a backpack. What is more - assuming the office is paying - rail journeys are air-conditioned and business class air travel is several cuts above the US. There are also plenty of usable public toilets. Thus it is something of an effort to travel to Pakistan from India nowadays. Since January, renewed tension on the border has meant there are no air (or any other transport) links between the two countries. Unless you're a shopaholic and wish to spend 17 hours in transit in Dubai, the only option is to cross the border on foot. That means taking the train to Amritsar, just inside Indian Punjab, and then a car to the Wagah border - the only direct crossing point along 2,000 km of international border. Since January, only foreigners have been permitted to cross which, on this particular morning, amounted to me. I proved to be a rare hit. Having spent the previous night in an Amritsar hotel that appeared to be hosting four simultaneous weddings, I felt somewhat bleary-eyed on the 30km drive to Wagah. The fertile Punjabi farmland - at the end of what my driver told me was a bumper spring harvest - was interspersed with the occasional indicator of Indo-Pak tension. There are more than a million troops on both sides of the border. But I only saw about 20 and most of those looked fairly lackadaisical. I also spotted a couple of artillery pieces and some tell-tale camouflage netting, concealing tanks in dug-out pits. There was little otherwise to stir me from my somnolence. Only the bountiful countryside of Punjab. I tend to drift off on car journeys, but this was the first time I had been awoken by a crowd of men yelling in my face. After momentary alarm, it became apparent that we had reached the Wagah crossing and were under siege from a crowd of roughly 20 hawkers. Until January they would have been accustomed to hundreds of thirsty travellers each day. This morning, it seemed, they had to make do with me. I managed to extricate myself with one tepid bottle of Pepsi. The same applied to the dozens of Indian immigration and customs officials inside the large concrete border house. They too had a lean hunger in their eyes. Bearing just one passport and one travel bag, I felt desperately inadequate to their needs. But they managed to share me round in relatively thrifty portions. All told, it took about an hour to get clearance from the Indian side. Since I wasn't boarding a plane, I had difficulty understanding why one customs official was so interested in my toothbrush. Or another in my tube of shaving foam. Meanwhile - and quite contrary to the official ban - several local farmers brazenly sauntered across the border on bullock-drawn carts holding bushels of cut wheat. No one checked their cargo, which, given its generous proportions, could quite easily have concealed Osama bin Laden and several of his cohorts. Something told me not to ask why. It would have been a pretext for a long conversation and I couldn't afford the time. Once cleared of the Indians, you walk roughly a quarter of a mile to reach the centre point of the border crossing, where military representatives of the two sides come together for an evening ritual of choreographed hatred. I was far too early for the "beating of the retreat" and the accompanying theatrics. But I've been told that it is one of the more bizarre spectacles. Cheered on by spectators, ornately dressed Indian and Pakistani soldiers march around other in a unique parade-ground manoeuvre that is meant to convey mutual contempt. "The weird thing is that it requires extensive co-ordination," said an American colleague in Delhi. Just before crossing to the Pakistani side, you walk past a recently erected monument dedicated to the one million Punjabis who lost their lives during the partition riots of 1947. It struck me that the big exit and entrance signs ought really to proclaim: "You are leaving the territory of Punjab. Welcome to Punjab." Only 50 miles separates the once intimate Punjabi cities of Amritsar and Lahore. Now electronic fencing and hundreds of thousands of armed men bar the way. And dozens of restless border officials. The guards in Pakistan had had ample warning of my approach, having watched me heave a suitcase for 10 minutes in their direction. Again, I felt an onerous responsibility, like a mother bird perched over a nest of cavernous mouths. I have been in 200-metre airport queues in Delhi and Karachi and still managed to clear the formalities quicker than this. But the conversation just isn't the same. "I haven't seen you at Wagah before," said one neatly moustachioed immigration officer."Next time don't be in such a hurry. We will sit down and have nice a long chat."

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (42559)	5/10/2002 3:52:14 AM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

There is something bizarre, if not perverse, about rich people gathering in posh hotels to discuss the plight of the very poor, writes John Thornhill in FT today... But Shanghai's hoteliers have been happy to exploit the latest manifestation of conspicuous do-gooding as 3,300 delegates descend on China's commercial capital to attend the 35th annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank. When he took over as the bank's president in January 1999, Tadao Chino was assumed to be the latest in a long line of anonymous Japanese finance ministry officials who would run the bank with clinical efficiency but little passion. The bank would press ahead with its traditional function of carpeting Asia with concrete by building bridges, roads and dams. But Mr Chino has surprised many with his moral fervour in rededicating the institution to fight poverty and brought a new buzz to the bank. He has reoriented the entire institution to deliver on the United Nations' goal of halving extreme poverty - generally defined as living on $1 a day - by 2015 and in the process waded into the politically explosive territory of advising countries on how to improve their governance. There is certainly no shortage of poor people in Asia - or work for the ADB to do, at least in theory. But Shanghai's scintillating skyline is testament to the fact that self-reliant Asians have been startlingly good at lifting themselves out of poverty - with little need of outside help. Indeed, Asian countries have almost been competing with each other to break world records on that score. While not wishing to sound complacent, Brahm Prakash, director of the bank's poverty reduction division, says that in contrast with other regions of the world Asia is well on course to meet its poverty reduction goals. He concedes, however, that the "west end" of the bank's territory, namely central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, is clearly experiencing greater problems. Mr Prakash believes that China, in particular, has done an "astonishing job" in tackling poverty. "It is a totally unprecedented and miraculous performance," he says. Not only have the Chinese brought immense relief to hundreds of millions of their own people, Mr Prakash says, they have also helped combat the despondency about development that has descended over other parts of the world, such as Africa. "China can now be seen as the saviour of the global economic system." Although China is one of the biggest recipients of ADB assistance, absorbing about $1bn of the ADB's $6bn of annual disbursements, the bank cannot claim much credit for the country's resurgence. And, in any case, it is perhaps in the nature of international aid agencies that their virtues remain invisible while their vices are all too often evident. The ADB has surely attracted a crowd of critics. Indeed, some of them came to Shanghai to deliver their complaints to Mr Chino in person. Representatives of communities affected by an ADB-sponsored water treatment project in Thailand and a road-building programme in Sri Lanka aired their robust opinions in a trust-building session between the bank and various non-governmental organisations. With exquisite politeness, Mr Chino bowed and thanked them for their criticisms, promising to read their petitions "very carefully". At least Mr Chino must have been grateful that the campaigners had refrained from emulating the recent antics of a group of left-wing activists in the Indian state of Kerala. They were so incensed by the "stringent" conditions attached to one of the bank's loans that they broke into the local ADB office and threatened to plant bombs. But the ADB has also come under fire from the other end of the spectrum as commercial bankers question whether the institution performs any functions that cannot be better done by the private sector. "The best way for the bank to raise the region's GDP would be for it to close down and give its money away," says one, somewhat jaundiced, banker. Stung by the criticism, ADB staff point to Afghanistan as an example of a country where the bank can play a vital role and where the private sector is still afraid to venture. Hedayat Amin-Arsala, vice chairman of Afghanistan's interim administration, certainly appeared appreciative of the $500m the ADB has pledged over the next 30 months to rebuilding his country. The injection of a total of $4.5bn in foreign aid, he says, will help Afghanistan regain its position as a trading bridge between east and west, central Asia and south Asia, lifting the economy of the entire region. Maybe the bank can help find a solution to Asia's "west end" problem after all. From FT today...