Riaz Haq writes this data-driven blog to provide information, express his opinions and make comments on many topics. Subjects include personal activities, education, South Asia, South Asian community, regional and international affairs and US politics to financial markets. For investors interested in South Asia, Riaz has another blog called South Asia Investor at http://www.southasiainvestor.com and a YouTube video channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkrIDyFbC9N9evXYb9cA_gQ
Karachi, one of world's fastest growing megacities, has seen its crime index ranking improve dramatically from 6 in 2013 to 50 in 2017, according to a survey of 327 world cities conducted by Numbeo. Karachi was ranked 47 in 2016. Reduction in violence is helping revive Pakistan's economy, making it the third fastest growing trillion dollar economy among the top 25 world economies by purchasing power parity.
Comparison to Major Cities:
Creek Vista, Karachi, Pakistan
In South Asia region, Karachi, now ranked 50, is safer than Bangladeshi capital Dhaka ranked 18 and the Delhi suburb of Gurgaon ranked 40. Delhi is ranked 60, Lahore 138, Mumbai 160 and Islamabad 226.
Karachi is also safer than American cities of Detroit, MI (17), Baltimore, MD (20), New Orleans, LA (21), Albuquerque, NM (27), St. Louis, MO (30) Oakland, CA (33) and Milwaukee, WI (46).
The year 2013 marked the beginning of the deployment of Pakistan Rangers in Karachi to fight rampant extortion, terrorism and violence by armed gangs patronized by some political parties. Evidence suggests that some of the politicians involved had links to Indian intelligence.
Impact on National Economy:
Reduction in violence in Karachi is helping revive Pakistan's economy, making it the third fastest growing trillion dollar economy among the top 25 world economies by purchasing power parity.
In a recent article titled "Pakistan Keeps Terrorists on the Run and Economy on a Roll", leading Japanese publication Nikkei Asia Review reported from Karachi that the negative perception of "terrorism, corruption, misrule" are "becoming outdated, and businesses are taking notice... thanks to sweeping operations by the army and a powerful paramilitary force". Here's a more extended excerpt of the Nikkei story:
"The Pakistan Rangers, a paramilitary law enforcement organization overseen by the military and the Interior Ministry, set out to tackle the violence head-on. In 2013, the Rangers Sindh -- which operate in Sindh Province, including Karachi -- mobilized 15,000 troops. The provincial legislature granted them broad powers to search homes and make arrests, enabling them to quickly turn the tide.
In 2017, there were zero bombings and only five kidnappings, according to Saeed, who serves as director general of the Rangers Sindh. This is no small feat in a city with a swelling population of 17 million -- perhaps even 20 million if migrants from rural areas are factored in. "We destroyed all of the terrorists' pockets," he said, adding that hotel occupancy rates are over 90%."
Summary:
Karachi, one of world's fastest growing megacities, has seen its crime index ranking improve dramatically from 6 in 2013 to 50 in 2017, according to a survey of 327 world cities conducted by Numbeo. Last year, Karachi was ranked 47. Reduction in violence is helping revive Pakistan's economy, making it the third fastest growing trillion dollar economy among the top 25 world economies by purchasing power parity. As the country's largest city and its financial capital and economic hub, a safe and healthy Karachi bodes well for Pakistan's future. The Pakistani military has played a crucial role in securing the nation's future by bringing peace to Karachi.
Pakistan's cyber security chief Mir Mazhar Jabbar tracked down and arrested Noor Aziz Uddin and his accomplices last month in Karachi. Noor was on FBI's Most Wanted list for stealing $50 million by international phone hacking that targeted small businesses in many countries around the world.
How Did Noor Do It?
Noor gathered business cards of small businesses and used them to target private branch exchange (PBX) switches by dialing into voicemail accounts and guessing passwords. One he guessed the voicemail passwords correctly, he would use the voicemail to forward calls to premium phone numbers that he owned. Then he and his many accomplices repeatedly dialed the hacked PBX numbers which forwarded to his premium phone lines earning him millions of dollars over several years. The premium phone line charges were in the range of several dollars a minutes.
The FBI’s official indictment doesn’t name specific entities, but it lists examples: One business in Livingston, New Jersey, was hacked for $24,120. Another, in Englewood, New Jersey, was charged $83,839, according to a story in International Business Times. Noor and his accomplices netted over $50 million over 4-year period from 2008 to 2012 by this scheme.
How Was Noor Caught:
Early in 2015, Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) found the cell phone number used by Noor personally. Upon getting hold of the phone number, Jabbar contacted the wireless service provider with a court order. The carrier then gave him access to the phone's GPS coordinates.
And that's how Jabbar reached Noor's doorstep last month.
Widespread use of Voice over IP (VoIP) by small businesses has created a huge opportunity for phone hackers. Communications Fraud Control Association, a telecom trade group based in New Jersey, estimated the PBX fraud at $4.42 billion in 2013.
Summary:
Growing access to technology is opening up new opportunities for criminals in both physical and cyber worlds. Noor Aziz Uddin case shows that the technology used by criminals to commit crimes can also be used by governments to fight such crimes. It requires law enforcement to stay one or two steps ahead of the criminals to beat them at their own game.
With the clear mandate for his Congress Party in recently concluded general elections, Indian Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh has won the right and responsibility to deal with huge challenges in front of him. In addition to the well-known social problems of hunger, poverty, lack of sanitation and poor infrastructure, Mr. Singh has to contend with the effects of the oppressive and ingrained caste system and religious intolerance as well as the growing nexus between crime and politics in Indian democracy. The new parliament has elected 153 tainted members, some of whom have been convicted or accused of serious crimes, including murder and rape.
Nexus of Crime and Politics:
About 153 members of the new Indian parliament have either been convicted and appealed or currently accused of various crimes. A major problem is that individuals charged with even the most serious crimes are allowed to stand if they have been convicted but their cases are under appeal, according to Times Online. “The speed of the Indian judicial system means it can take 30 years to complete a case – easily long enough to live out a full political career,” Mr Himanshu Jha, of the National Social Watch Coalition, said to the Times Online recently.
This nexus of crime and politics in India developed in two stages - in the first stage, Indian politicians used criminal elements and gangsters to control polling stations and intimidate their rivals; this gave legitimacy to these people and they decided to contest elections for themselves rather than merely act as muscle men (baahubali) for other politicians. There are many examples of this pattern, such as Munna Shukla and Shahabudin in Bihar, Raju Bhaiyya in U.P and Arun Gawli of Mumbai.
Most Indian politicians have used their election wins to significantly enrich themselves, according to their own pre-election declarations of assets. For example, the comparison of assets of candidates who won in 2004 and sought re-elections in 2009 shows that the wealth of UP politicians has grown by 559%, over five times, in five years, second only to their Karnataka counterparts who registered a growth of 693% in the same period, according to Sulekha.com.
The Caste System:
The entire culture and governance of India is heavily influenced by the caste system that legitimizes abuse and exploitation of one group of people by another. It plays a significant role in voting patterns as well. Indians usually vote their caste rather than cast their votes. There is a counter argument to this concept of oppression: What about the lower caste politicians who also have risen to authority? The response is: Can they be different from the social milieu they belong to? Other issues include the lack of democratic structures inside India’s political parties and a culture of corruption fostered by a stifling level of bureaucracy.
Social Deprivation:
India, often described as peaceful, stable and prosperous in the Western media, remains home to the largest number of poor and hungry people in the world. The UN Millennium Develop Goals listed below remain distant for the Indian people:
1 Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger 2 Achieve universal primary education 3 Promote gender equality and empower women 4 Reduce child mortality 5 Improve maternal health 6 Combat HIV/Aids, malaria, and other diseases 7 Ensure environmental sustainability 8 Develop a global partnership for development
About one-third of the world's extremely poor people live in India. More than 450 million Indians exist on less than $1.25 a day, according to the World Bank. It also has a higher proportion of its population living on less than $2 per day than even sub-Saharan Africa. India has about 42% of the population living below the new international poverty line of $1.25 per day. The number of Indian poor also constitute 33% of the global poor, which is pegged at 1.4 billion people, according to a Times of India news report. More than 6 million of those desperately poor Indians live in Mumbai alone, representing about half the residents of the nation's financial capital. They live in super-sized slums and improvised housing juxtaposed with the shining new skyscrapers that symbolize India's resurgence. According to the World Bank and the UN Development Program (UNDP), 22% of Pakistan's population is classified as poor.
There is widespread hunger and malnutrition in all parts of India. India ranks 66th on the 2008 Global Hunger Index of 88 countries while Pakistan is slightly better at 61 and Bangladesh slightly worse at 70. The first India State Hunger Index (Ishi) report in 2008 found that Madhya Pradesh had the most severe level of hunger in India, comparable to Chad and Ethiopia. Four states — Punjab, Kerala, Haryana and Assam — fell in the 'serious' category. "Affluent" Gujarat, 13th on the Indian list is below Haiti, ranked 69. The authors said India's poor performance was primarily due to its relatively high levels of child malnutrition and under-nourishment resulting from calorie deficient diets.
India might be an emerging economic power, but it is way behind Pakistan, Bangladesh and even Afghanistan in providing basic sanitation facilities, a key reason behind the death of 2.1 million children under five in the country.
Lizette Burgers, chief of water and environment sanitation of the Unicef, recently said India is making progress in providing sanitation but it lags behind most of the other countries in South Asia. A former Indian minister Mr Raghuvansh Prasad Singh told the BBC that more than 65% of India's rural population defecated in the open, along roadsides, railway tracks and fields, generating huge amounts of excrement every day.
Comparison with Pakistan:
Unlike Indian democracy where middle class has a bigger role, Pakistani democracy remains largely dominated by the feudal class. Pakistani parliament is dominated by big landowners who have a sense of entitlement to rule, even though they pay no taxes on their farm income. They routinely escape prosecution for the crimes they commit against their own people. When they do get caught and charged with serious crimes, they use political influence and their deal-making power to beat the rap. Musharraf's US-sponsored amnesty (dubbed NRO) for late Benazir Bhutto, her widower Asif Zardari and other political leaders now in power offers a prime example of how the politicians are not held to account for serious crimes of corruption and murder. Some of the Taliban in Swat used the widespread grievances of the tenant farmers against their landlords as justification for Shariah-based Nizam-e-Adl to provide speedy justice.
Future of Indian Democracy:
Majority of the poor and rural Indians are sustaining democracy at a great cost to themselves in terms of the grinding poverty that defines their meager existence. Contrasting Indian democracy with Chinese one-party rule, a British minister recently said that the number of poor people had dropped in the one-party communist state by 70% since 1990 but had risen in the world's biggest democracy by 5%. No one knows how long will the average Indian have to wait before the fruits of democracy to reach him or her. In the meanwhile, Maoists (and other revolutionaries) are gaining momentum and threatening a revolution to bring about a visible improvement in the lives of the poor.
At a minimum, Indian government should make the necessary investments to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals. As the UNICEF said last year, unless India achieves major improvements in health, nutrition, water and sanitation, education, gender equality and child protection, the global efforts to reach the MDGs will fail.
Here's a video clip on grinding poverty in India:
Here's a video clip on India's massive corruption:
"Normally they (Six members of India's Parliament) are in jail, serving time for crimes ranging from extortion and kidnapping to murder. The Indian constitution allows them out on bail to attend important parliamentary votes. But the sight of convicted murderers entering the parliamentary chamber won't be the most edifying of spectacles." So says a BBC report this morning.
In the wake of the Communist Party's pull-out from the Indian coalition in New Delhi, there is a vote of confidence scheduled for this week. The Indian government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is pulling out all stops to win this vote to salvage the US-India nuclear deal.
While many of the complex details of the deal appear shrouded in mystery, the deal essentially gives India access to US nuclear technology and nuclear fuel in exchange for putting some (not all) of its nuclear installations under IAEA's international safeguards on nuclear technology. It does not prevent India from continuing to develop and refine its nuclear weapons arsenal. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the supporters of the deal see it as the international community giving its nuclear program legitimacy, assuring its energy security and, they hope, set India on the road to superpower status. However, the opponents, led by the Communist Party of India, see the deal as a trap that will bind India into a strategic alliance with the United States with long term negative consequences. The opponents believe the nuclear deal, as it is being voted, is subject to the provisions of the Hyde Act, which could constrain India's nuclear program.
Members of parliament are being offered all kinds of incentives to vote a certain way. Both the government and the opposition are trying desperately to entice them with promises of largess, influence and plum jobs in return for their vote.
Here's more from the BBC: .".. wavering members of parliament have been busy speculating in public about what kind of job might persuade them to vote one way or another. The Ministry of Coal, perhaps, or the office of Chief Minister of the state of Jharkhand. That's politics, you might think. But a more serious allegation came from a communist leader, AB Bardhan, who suggested this week that the Congress party was trying to buy parliamentary votes for about three million pounds (six million dollars) each."
In an earlier post Pakistani Myths About India's Resurgence, I wrote as follows: "For those who sing the praises of India’s democracy, I would suggest viewing Bollywood hit “Sarkar Raj” that portrays the Godfather-like corrupt, criminal and murderous behavior of India’s powerful politicians. Again, I am certain India is blessed with many honest leaders and this must be a caricature of the reality of Indian democracy, but it does bring out the fact of criminals' presence in Indian politics. According to political science Professor Pradeep Chibber of UC Berkeley, as many as 30% of India's legislators have criminal records. However, the good professor contends that democracy is a messy process that must be allowed to work its bugs out. It should not be interrupted or abandoned because the alternatives are far worse. India has a functioning democracy with an independent judiciary and other institutions that are respected."
The key questions are: Is Indian democracy overrated? Has this democracy served its people well? It is well known that India continues to be the home of the largest number of poor people in the world. It has the highest population of malnourished children. Its farmers are committing suicides at an alarming rate. It has the dubious distinction of being the murder capital of the world, with the largest number of homicides in the world recorded last year.
In a recent interview of Ted Koppel by Charlie Rose regarding Koppel's latest China documentary, Koppel asked rhetorically what rights are more important than the right not to be hungry, the right to be literate, the right to basic clothes and shelter and the right to make a living. He argued that the Chinese government has been largely successful in providing these basic rights to the Chinese people. This is in sharp contrast to the situation in India where there is still widespread hunger, poverty and illiteracy, particularly in rural India where the vast majority of Indians live.
Recent foreign visitors to Pakistan, which has at best been a pseudo-democracy during the last several years, find that the average Pakistani enjoys a higher standard of living than his or her Indian counterpart.
In spite of heavy visa restrictions and quotas imposed by many nations around the world, about a million Indians manage to leave India in search of a better life.
Democracy is not Nirvana. It is not going to efficiently fix a lot of the basic issues of food, clothing, shelter and literacy that the less developed nations have to deal with it on a daily basis. The best thing that can be said in defense of Indian democracy is that the alternative forms of government would likely be worse for India.
