July Vacation in Beijing

My family and I arrived on a Saturday evening in late July at Beijing's international airport's beautiful and spacious terminal 3, the new massive glass and steel structure that was opened just prior to last year's Summer Olympics in the city. I did not see it when I visited Beijing back in 2006, and this July visit was my family's first visit to Beijing. All of the airline and ground staff and many of the Asian passengers were wearing masks, an indication of the heightened concern about the spread of swine flu. We had to fill out health declaration forms along with the usual disembarkation cards prior to arrival. In addition to many watchful health workers, we saw infra-red detectors at several points along the way to the exit, in an attempt to identify any passengers with fever or flu-like symptoms. The process of health checks, immigration, baggage claim and customs went quickly and smoothly, and we emerged from the terminal to be greeted by an English-speaking Chinese driver who was holding a placard with my name on it.

Drive from the Airport

We were driven to our hotel room in a black Buick van. The multi-lane highway from the airport to our hotel in the financial district was wide, clean and smooth, with extensive landscaping on both sides. Clearly, Beijing has benefited from its three year intensive preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympics that forced a number of significant infrastructure improvements which are taken for granted in the industrialized West. As we entered the city, we saw a dense buildup of modern skyscrapers along the streets. It took us less than 30 minutes to reach the hotel lobby. We had made reservations for a suite to accommodate all four of us via an online travel service. Unfortunately, however, there was some confusion, and we were first shown into a small, single-room suite that was too small for us. The hotel staff immediately realized it, and apologized even before I could protest, and corrected the mistake by moving us into a large two-room suite with club lounge access. The fact that I showed the staff a print-out of the hotel reservation was helpful in making the change.

It was 11 PM by the time we settled in our suite. The club lounge had already closed, and we ordered room service to eat a light meal before going to bed. Since we arrived later than scheduled because of flight delays in Hong Kong, it was almost mid-night when I called the tour operator for the tour we had booked for Sunday. To my surprise, the hotel staff found the contact person at the tour operator and had me talk with her to confirm an 8AM pickup from the hotel lobby the next morning.

We got up early on Sunday morning, showered and changed, and then had a good, healthy, freshly cooked breakfast served in the hotel club lounge. We made it to the lobby at 8AM, and found our tour guide waiting for us there.

Tienanmen Square

The Sunday tour started in the famous and historic Tienanmen Square. Though the city was hot, humid and hazy, but the climate and the environment were still significantly better than what we experienced in Dubai and Karachi. The city streets appeared to be quite clean, landscaped and well managed. Upon arriving at the Tienanmen Square, we were warned by our tour guide that as pedestrians we do not have the right of way on Beijing streets, though we noticed that the drivers appeared to be a bit more courteous than what we observed in Karachi. Our guide pointed to the various important buildings in the famous Square, including the one housing the embalmed remains of Communist leader Mao Zedong on display in a crystal sarcophagus, and the entrance to the Forbidden City with a large portrait of Chairman Mao. There were hordes of aggressive street vendors trying to sell all kinds of souvenirs in the Square, but the one that caught my eye was a Mao watch, a watch with a picture of Mao on the dial, with both hands waving. This watch and the vendors selling them are symbolic of how far China has come from Mao's days of strong denunciation of capitalism.

In recent history, Tienanmen Square was the scene of the Chinese government crackdown by the units of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) against mass students protests in 1989. Since the death of Chairman Mao and passing of the leadership to late Deng Xiaoping in 1980s, the Chinese communist party has pursued liberalizing the nation's economy without political liberalization, in the same way other East Asians did earlier. Such a strategy has allowed them to pursue rapid industrialization with accelerated economic growth over the last two decades, while forcefully controlling the chaos on the streets, to lift a record number people out of poverty. China's large neighbor India has failed to use a period of high economic growth to lift tens of millions of people out of poverty, falling far short of China’s record in protecting its population from the ravages of chronic hunger, United Nations officials said recently. Last year, British Development Minister Alexander contrasted the rapid growth in China with India's economic success - highlighting government figures that showed 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%.

But China still has a lot more to do to catch up with the industrialized West. A visit to a public toilet in the Square by my family was a bit of an unpleasant surprise. While the squat toilets were expected, the lack of toilet paper (or water, as they saw in Pakistan and UAE) and open doors or no doors were something unexpected. However, there were vendors next to the public toilet doing brisk business selling toilet paper to the tourists. As part of pre-Olympic prep, the International Olympic Committee required the construction of hundreds of public toilets in Beijing, but apparently it did not require the availability of toilet paper to go with the new facilities. Beijing launched a three-year campaign -- with a 400-million-yuan (57 million U.S. dollars) investment -- to modernize its public toilets in 2005 as part of its effort to prepare for the 2008 Olympic Games. Now, Beijing has over 5,000 public toilets available within a five-minute walk of any downtown location.

Forbidden City

As we entered Forbidden City (Zijin Cheng), it bought back memories of the story and the scenes from Bernardo Bertolucci's movie "The Last Emperor", that was filmed here back in the 1980s. Built from 1406 to 1420, the Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. It now houses the Palace Museum. For 500 years, it served as the home of the Emperor and his household, as well as the ceremonial and political center of Chinese government.

According to a Wikipedia entry, the Forbidden City has 980 surviving buildings with 8,707 bays of rooms and covers 7.8 million square feet in the heart of the Chinese Capital. The palace complex exemplifies traditional Chinese palatial architecture, and has influenced cultural and architectural developments in East Asia and elsewhere. It was declared a World Heritage Site in 1987, and is listed by UNESCO as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world.

It was fairly long walk in the July heat through the Forbidden City, where we saw many buildings of the imperial palace serving different needs, and heard stories of the various emperors, their queens and concubines, and the eunuchs who served them. What I found missing this time was the Starbucks coffee shop, but I was told by our tour guide that only the sign has been removed in an effort to placate the opponents. As our guide continued with his narration, there was a lot of pomp and ceremony as well as the stories of palace intrigue. Some of these stories about Pu Yi, the last emperor, formed part of the plot and the screenplay of Bernardo Berolucci movie of 1987. During filming of the immense coronation scene in the Forbidden City, Queen Elizabeth II was in Beijing on a state visit. The production was given priority over her by the Chinese authorities and she was therefore unable to visit the Forbidden City. Though Mao's picture adorns the entrance to the Forbidden City, it is believed that Mao Zedong made a pledge to never set foot in it and he kept his pledge.

Summer Palace

After lunch, we headed to the Summer Palace (Yihe Yuan) in northwest Beijing. An aggressive vendor outside the Palace persisted in selling me a set of post cards for 10 yuan. I agreed and gave him a 100 yuan bill, and then he gave me the post cards and change in some unknown currency (probably Russian ruble) which I didn't realize until I tried to use it buy a bottle of water and it was refused by the water vendor. So, beware of unscrupulous vendors.

The Summer Palace was really crowded, mostly by the locals and their children out on a Sunday afternoon. It attracts a lot of Beijingers during summer because of its pleasant breeze, relatively lower temperature, and a nice boat ride on the lake that offers relief from the city heat. There were also many paddle boats on the lake rented out by visitors.

The Summer Palace, built in 1750 by Emperor Qianlong, covers an area of 2.9 square kilometers, three quarters of which is water. The central Kunming Lake covering 2.2 square kilometers was entirely man made and the excavated soil was used to build Longevity Hill. In the Summer Palace, one finds a variety of palaces, gardens, and other classical-style architectural structures. In 1888, it was given the current name, Yihe Yuan. It served as a summer resort for Empress Dowager Cixi, who diverted 30 million taels of silver, said to be originally designated for the Chinese navy (Beiyang Fleet), into the reconstruction and enlargement of the Summer Palace.

We walked through a long corridor enjoying the gentle breeze while our tour guide Frank Zhang entertained us with a narration of the evil Empress Dowager Cixi who imprisoned and killed the pro-industrialization and reform-minded young Guangxu in 1898. About the same time period when Meiji reforms in Japan transformed it from a medieval society to a leading economic and military power in Asia, China's Guangxu's idealistic pro-western movement called for drastic reforms in the governmental, educational, and social systems. With support from foreign powers, the Guangxu Emperor looked to industrialize China, institute capitalism, cut government waste through entitlements and continue to strengthen the military. He looked to create a modern educational system modeled on western school curriculum and transform the government from an absolute monarchy to a western styled constitutional monarchy with democratic institutions.

Temple of Heaven

From the Summer Palace, we went diagonally across town from the north west to the south east of Beijing where the Temple of Heaven is located. Constructed from 1406 to 1420 during the reign of the Emperor Yongle (1402–1424) of Ming dynasty, it is a complex of Taoist buildings in Beijing's Xuanwu District. The complex was visited by the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties for annual ceremonies of prayer to Heaven for good harvest. It is regarded as a Taoist temple, although Chinese Heaven worship, especially by the reigning monarch of the day, pre-dates Taoism.

It is similar to a central park in major US cities and, in spite of its admission fee, it attracts a many city folks in Beijing. We saw a large number of people of various ages engaged in all kinds of fun activities from playing games to singing and dancing.

Exploring on Our Own

On Monday, we decided to explore the city on our own. Knowing how difficult it is to get around town without knowing the local language, we sought the help of the concierge at our hotel. The concierge gave us a map of the hotel location that said to the taxi driver to bring us back there if we get lost. The concierge also gave us a card with the names a number of popular locations such as the silk market, the pearl market and Tienanmen Square written in both Chinese and English. In addition, we requested the concierge to give us cards with the Chinese names/addresses of Beijing's main Muslim mosque and neighborhood, as well as Wall Mart, Maojiao Hunan restaurant and South Beauty Sichuan restaurant.

I also bought and installed a local China Mobile SIM for my cell phone and saved the phone number of our hotel concierge, which I could potentially use to call for help to give instructions to taxi drivers.

We first ventured out to Niu Jie neighborhood where Beijing's main mosque is located. It is believed that Islam was first introduced in China in 616-18 AD by Waggas (Sad ibn abi Waqqas), Sayid Wahab ibn Abu Kabcha. Sad ibn abi Waqqas was the maternal uncle of Prophet Muhammad. Wahab ibn abu Kabcha (Wahb abi Kabcha) might be a son of al-Harth ibn Abdul Uzza (known as Abu Kabsha). These pioneers were companions of Prophet Muhammad.

As we entered the mosque, we were warmly greeted by a bearded gentleman wearing a white cap who said Assalam-Alaikum. As we walked around, we saw signs in English indicating that the mosque was constructed in 995 by two Arab Muslim Imams who are buried within the mosque compound. Throughout the Yuan, Ming and Qing periods (13th-19th C), it underwent several alterations and since 1949 it has been repeatedly restored. Unlike the traditional mosque architecture in Muslim nations, the Niu Jie mosque has a Chinese style roof with no minarets. Its traditional Chinese roof design has animal figures found on the corners of the temple roofs in China.



Most Hui Muslim Chinese are similar in culture to Han Chinese with the exception that they practice Islam, and have some distinctive cultural characteristics as a result. For example, as Muslims, they follow Islamic dietary laws and reject the consumption of pork, the most common meat consumed in Chinese culture, and have also given rise to their variation of Chinese cuisine, Chinese Islamic cuisine. Their mode of dress also differs only in that adult males wear white caps and females wear headscarves or (occasionally) veils, as is the case in most Islamic cultures.

Niu Jie (Ox Street) is a cramped road running north-south in the Muslim Quarter, about a mile directly west of the Temple of Heaven. In addition to the signs in Chinese, you can see signs in Arabic as well. The street is lined with Muslim restaurants, halal meat shops and vendors selling fried dough rings, rice cakes and shaobang (muffins), and you can see men wearing white caps and beards. While I had been warned about beggars in all parts of Beijing, I was saddened to see that this is the only part of town where we encountered the street beggars, mostly children, during our visit to Beijing. Just to put it in perspective, the street begging and the beggars we saw in Beijing pale in comparison to my experience in India and Pakistan. As India struggles to stage Commonwealth Games next year, India's 1200 beggar families in Delhi are learning to ask for charity in multiple languages to appeal to the 100,000 foreign visitors expected to attend the games.

We took a taxi in Niu Jie and went to see the local Wall Mart store. It turned out to be quite different from a typical Wall Mart Store in the US. Most of the floor space was dedicated to food and groceries, with a section for apparel and other items. The prices of the apparel we saw seemed to be a lot lower than the prices of similar apparel in US stores. This persuaded us to do some shopping there. Since there was expectation of rain the next day, I decided to buy a rain jacket for a couple of US dollars.

It was about 1 PM and we were all hungry, and we all love spicy food. The obvious choice for us was a Hunan restaurant Mao Jiao in the financial district. The concierge at our hotel told us that it was established and initially run by Chairman Mao's mother. It features a large, golden bust and pictures of Chairman Mao as part of its decor. Mao was from Hunan province and loved hot, peppery dishes of the Hunan region. Fortunately for us, there was a menu in English and the fact that the staff spoke no English did not prevent us from ordering spicy grilled shrimp piled high with red peppers and hot shredded beef with green peppers. It was really good food, the best Chinese food we have had in a long time. We then walked to our hotel for a brief rest.

In the evening we headed out to the Silk Market (Xiushui), located close to the embassies protected by barbed wires and armed guards. Contrary to our expectation, almost all of the vendors spoke English well enough to engage in serious bargaining. These were some of the most aggressive vendors, mostly girls, I have seen who actively solicit and get customers to buy their "designer" wares, ranging from apparel to jewelry to gifts and souvenirs. Their asking prices are any where from three to six times the final prices at which they are quite willing to sell. You can also find traditional Chinese items made from "authentic" pearls to silk to jade at "low" prices, but it is a "buyers beware" market. We did some shopping here and paid less than a third of asking prices for the items we, bought but I am still convinced we paid more than others who are better hagglers.

After our brief "shopping spree", we decided to go for dinner at South Beauty, a Sichuan restaurant in the financial district. I called our hotel concierge to give directions to the taxi driver who dropped us off right in front of the restaurant within a half hour drive. This restaurant was definitely more upscale than Mao Jiao, and the hostess and waitresses all spoke English. The menu was also presented in English. We ordered the familiar Kung Pao chicken, the spicy stone grilled shrimp, fried beef with a fiery sauce of Sichuan chilies, garlic, cilantro and peanuts on the side, and white rice. The food was excellent, as was the service. The bill, including a generous tip, added up to about $85 for all four of us, quite normal by US standards, but pricey in terms of the Chinese Yuan.

Ming Tombs and Great Wall

Our Tuesday tour started real early, with the tour guide picking us up at 7:30AM in the hotel lobby. The guide then picked up several more people, including a Chinese Canadian couple, a German couple and an Australian from various hotels before heading out about 30 miles north to the Ming Tombs. The site was picked by the third Ming Dynasty emperor Yongle (1402–1424), who moved the capital of China from Nanjing (lit: South Capital) to the present location of Beijing (lit: North Capital). There is a massive statue of Yongle, and various artifacts and a model of the tombs in the structure leading up to the mound under which Yongle was buried.

Our guide explained to us that from the Yongle Emperor onwards, 13 Ming Dynasty Emperors were buried in this area. The tombs of the first two Ming Emperors are located near Nanjing (the capital city during their reigns). Emperor Jingtai was also not buried here, as the Emperor Tianshun had denied Jingtai an imperial burial, but was instead buried west of Beijing. The last Chongzhen Emperor, who hanged himself in April 1644, named Si Ling by the Qing emperor, was the last to be buried here, but on a much smaller scale than his predecessors. During the Ming dynasty the tombs were off limits to commoners, but in 1644 Li Zicheng's army ransacked and set many of the tombs on fire before advancing and capturing Beijing in April of that year.

We then had the customary stop at one of the tourist traps to get us to buy exorbitantly priced jade, pearl or silk items, followed by an unremarkable lunch provided as part of the tour. Then on to the Great Wall.

Great Wall

We arrived at the Badaling section of the Great Wall in the afternoon. One big change I saw since my last visit was the massive "Beijing 2008 One World One Dream" sign that dominates the landscape. I also did not see the Starbucks coffee shop that was so visible before, but it may just be that the Starbucks sign has been removed to fend off protests.

Badaling section of the wall was built on one of the highest peaks of the Jundu Mountain, which belongs to the Yanshan Range. It is the most famous section of the Great Wall close to Beijing. It leads to Beijing to the south, Yanqing country to the north, Xuanhua and Datong to the west.

Long regarded as one of the seven wonders of the world, the Great Wall of China was built from the 5th century BC to the 16th century CE. It stretches for about 5,500 miles of an arc that runs along the southern edge of Inner Mongolia. The average height of the Ming Great Wall is 33 feet and the width is about 15 feet. The historic Wall winding through the hills is fairly steep at certain locations along the mountain sides. It is not merely a wall but instead a complete and rigorous defense project composed of a large number of passes, watchtowers, garrison towns, beacon towers and blockhouses. At its peak during the Ming period, this Wall was guarded by more than a million soldiers to keep out Mongol invaders. It has been estimated that somewhere in the range of 2 to 3 million Chinese died as part of the centuries-long project of building the wall.

The walk on the Wall was an exercise similar to the hike on Mission Peak in Fremont, CA. It was quite demanding and exhilarating at the same time. I spent about two hours on the Wall, then returned to the coffee shop where the rest of the group gathered for the return trip. On our way back, we drove by the Olympic village, the picturesque Bird's Nest stadium and the beautiful aquatic center. The whole area looked quite impressive. The Olympic Village, covering 27.55 hectares with a floor space of more than 500,000 square meters, was home to about 16,000 athletes and officials during the Olympics. The apartments have now been sold to the general public at 31,000 yuan (4,558.8 U.S. dollars) per square meter, averaging about a million US dollars for each unit. By comparison, equivalent units at Karachi's upscale Emaar Crescent project by the sea are selling at $500,000 or less.

We returned to our hotel room on Tuesday evening, had dinner at the club lounge and then packed up to leave the next morning for San Francisco. It was an educational, memorable, emotional and fun-filled vacation for me and the rest of the family. But, after about three weeks in three countries, we were all quite happy to be returning to the comforts of our home in the United States.

Related Links:

China's Rapid Industrialization

Beijing Olympics 2008

Can Congress Deliver in India?

Eleven Days in Karachi, Pakistan

Arrival in Karachi

My family and I arrived at Karachi's Jinnah International Airport on Tuesday in mid-July, 2009, after a short flight from Dubai in the afternoon. Our arrival was an hour later than scheduled. The disembarkation from the plane was fairly quick but the process of immigration and baggage claim was very slow, in clear contrast to our experience in Dubai. Even though it took more than a half hour to go through the immigration line where the passport numbers were being manually written down instead of being scanned, when we got to the baggage claim we had to wait another half hour to get our baggage. But we did go through the Customs green channel quickly without being stopped, and emerged to be greeted by a warm welcome by our family members in Pakistan.

As they did in Dubai, my daughters again found familiar symbols of American business presence as they saw a McDonald's restaurant right across from the exit at Karachi airport. We were driven to a suite at a private club where we stayed for the next eleven days. Because of my nephew's planned wedding two days after our arrival, I expected my sister's house to be quite full of people, and I chose to stay at the club rather than a hotel because of the relative security it offered from potential terror threats. In addition to a better security and lower daily rate than hotels, the club also offered more space and facilities, including room service, a gym, a jogging track, open lawns and assurance of uninterrupted supply of water and electricity that have become luxury for Karachi residents.


Karachi Weather and Traffic

Though it was a hot, humid and hazy summer day and the traffic was undisciplined, the drive from the airport was still fast and smooth, with all of the new infrastructure development consisting of many recently-built flyovers, underpasses, on-ramps and of-ramps to take us to the club in Defense Housing Authority (DHA) in Karachi.

After checking in at the club, we left for my sister's home which was a quick and short drive, in spite of the fact that a section of the road was torn up for repairs that delayed us slightly. As we sat down for lunch with my sister and her family, the power went out, but a small UPS unit kept some of the fans and lights still functioning. We enjoyed traditional Pakistani dishes of kofta, kebab and biryani, which were followed by delicious Pakistani mangoes in season in July. After lunch, one of my nephews bought a Warid SIM for my cell phone which was loaded with Rs. 500 worth of minutes ( at less than Rs. 3 per minutes) and it activated immediately upon installation. He also set up a Wi-Fi connection for us to start using our iPhones' email and browser functions and our notebook computers. On the way back to the club, we stopped at Makro, a Dutch-German warehouse-style supermarket like Costco, and picked up milk, tea bags, Splenda, orange juice, yogurt, croissants and Nestle water bottles to consume during our stay. Though the brand names were different, the shopping experience was similar to our grocery shopping trips in California. After returning to the club, we went to bed early to freshen up for the following full day of activities before my nephew's wedding day.

Garbage, Garbage Everywhere

On Wednesday morning we ate breakfast in our room. Then we ordered a Metro cab to take us to my sister's home, had lunch at my wife's sister's home and then on to the cemetery in North Nazimabad. We saw lots of heaps of stinking trash in several parts of the city along the roadside on our way. It seemed as though the Karachi garbage collectors were on strike, but my impressions proved to be incorrect, as I was told that this was normal in several parts of Karachi. The government owned and operated garbage collection systems pick up less than 50% of the solid waste generated and the remaining uncollected garbage rots on the streets, posing serious health risks for the growing population. The massive piles of garbage also plug up the already inadequate storm water drains resulting in serious flooding in the monsoon months of July and August every year. None of the major cities in Pakistan have an adequate solid waste management system, though Karachi city government has reportedly contracted with a Chinese firm to establish and operate such a system. The waste collection and management firm, Shanghai Shen Gong Environmental Protection Company Limited, will start its operations of collecting litter from across the city from August 14, 2009 - initially in only six of the eighteen towns of the city of Karachi. And, as expected, this service will not come free, nor should it. Karachi-ites will be required to pay Rs. 100 to 1,000 per month as public utility charges under six categories (according to lot size) on their residential units. Businesses built on 200 sq yards to 10,000 sq yards or more will have to pay Rs. 500 to Rs. 5,000 in garbage collection fees while industrial units covering an area of 1,000 sq yards to 5,000 sq yards and above will be billed Rs. 500 to Rs. 2,000 per month. There have already been howls of protests against these garbage collection fees and it will be interesting to see how effective CDGK (City District Government of Karachi) will be in ensuring payments.

Cemetery Visit

Upon reaching the cemetery, my wife managed to find her parents' final resting place, but I was not so fortunate to find and pay my respect at my father's grave. I was told by my brother-in-law who accompanied us that the cemetery keepers have no qualms about reselling used burial plots to build fresh graves on top of existing ones when they realize no one has visited for a while. But I did find some consolation in praying for my father's soul and the souls of others at the cemetery.

Nephew's Wedding

Thursday was my nephew's wedding day and we were warned that weddings in Karachi are very late night affairs that last into the wee hours of the next morning. So we decided to sleep in late in the morning on Thursday, but unfortunately one of my daughters started complaining of an upset stomach in the middle of the night. The next morning I called one of my friends to help me find medications for her. I was pleasantly surprised to find that almost everything I was looking for was available at a nearby store, ranging from Imodium to Pedialyte and Gatorade.

In the evening, we gathered at my sister's house to form a wedding procession. One of my nephews took the groom's car to be adorned by a florist but, as he was returning from the florist's, he was robbed at gun point and relieved of his wallet, cash, driver's license, credit cards and mobile phone. He seemed still quite shaken up as the wedding party (barat) left at 11:00 PM for the wedding hall in Gulshan-e-Iqbal, where the bride's family had made arrangements for the nikah. When we arrived at our destination, everyone was there but the kazi who was supposed to solemnize the marriage. Apparently, he had car trouble along the way and had to make alternative arrangements. He showed up about a half hour late, but then promptly completed the religious ceremony and the dinner was served. It was a good occasion for me to see a lot of my relatives and friends who I hadn't met in years. Since my daughter was still not well, we decided to leave about 1:30 AM, well before the rukhsati.

Breakfast with Friends

Three of my friends, SM, FN and TS showed up Friday morning for breakfast with me at the club dining hall. All three are fellow NEDians who I met after at least eight years. SM is a member of the club and made arrangements for my stay there. He is in the carpet business which is currently very slow because of the ongoing economic crisis hurting consumer confidence in Pakistan. FN, who joined us is doing brisk business by selling UPS units and diesel/gas generators because of the erratic and unpredictable power situation in Pakistan. I suggested to him to consider adding solar panel units backed up with battery storage to his list of offerings to try and promote cleaner energy. He seemed a little skeptical because of the current higher costs of solar solutions per watt compared to the UPS devices and gas-burning generators. The third friend, TS, is in management consulting business and is the current president of the local chapter of the IEEE. We reminisced about the old times, talked politics and current affairs and had the traditional omelet-paratha breakfast with Pakistani chai.

Twelve Hour Power Outages

There is continuing and growing gap between the nation's power supply and demand. An aspect of the increasing power outages from just a few hours in 2007 to over twelve hours a day now is the fact that most power producers are operating 30-40% below capacity, generating only 12000 MW when the installed capacity is about 20,000 MW. Companies like PEPCO, WAPDA and KESC owe billions of rupees in unpaid bills to the various power producers who are not buying enough fuel to operate on full capacity. Part of the problem is the widespread power theft accounting for as much as 30-40% of the total power produced. Even the government departments and government ministers and officials are guilty of not paying their bills while demanding the continuation of power flow.



Lunch with Activist Friend

We were invited to lunch with a friend RD and his wife VD at Barbecue Tonight restaurant in Clifton on Friday. The couple picked us up at the club and took us to the restaurant by the sea where we had a very good lunch of Pakistani grilled meats and curries of various flavors.

The former head of an NGO called Shehri, RD is a well-known Karachi engineering consultant and a prominent civic activist, who has often been a thorn in the side of the local developers and their friends in big places. Since he is not Muslim, he was particularly targeted with a fatwa against him by the unscrupulous mullahs in developers' pockets. He remained under police protection for a while until the fatwa against him was lifted. But he continues to be undaunted in his pursuit of a better Karachi for its citizens. His current campaign is aimed at significant modifications in the $43 billion Bundal and Buddo islands projects awarded to Emaar, a Dubai developer, in 2006. A bridge will be constructed at a cost of $50 million to link Karachi Defense Housing Society (DHA) Phase-8 with the two Islands. The islands are situated about a mile off the coast of Karachi. A major portion of one of the two islands has submerged beneath the sea and the Emaar Group will reclaim this land. According to the initial plan, about 15,000 houses are to be constructed and sold to the public. The construction on the islands has started in December, 2008, but the reports indicate a slowing of the planned effort due to the current economic slowdown in Emaar's Dubai home base and the weak real estate market in Karachi.

The Dreaded Monsoon

We woke up to heavy monsoon rains on Saturday morning, the day my sister and her husband had planned valima reception for their son. The rain did stop mid-day and we were able to go out and visit with my sister, but the situation got worse in the evening and the reception had to be abandoned. The temperature dropped several degrees and a pleasant breeze was in evidence, but the city streets were flooded and many drivers stranded, there was a massive and prolonged power outage hitting more than 90% of the city, and life essentially came to a standstill. The streets around our club were also flooded, but the water was quickly pumped out by large pumps by the next morning. Almost the entire city lost power. Even our club had trouble because an underground cable connecting with the emergency diesel generator was flooded. It took a few hours for the club to restore emergency power to our suite. There were reports of dozens of casualties from drownings to electrocutions to building collapses in different parts of the city. The problems were compounded by the loss of power at the city's main pumping station at Dhabeji that cut off water to the entire city for more than 24 hours. An estimated 700 million gallons of water could not be pumped over a period of about 40 hours. There were riots in the streets on Sunday as angry residents spilled out on to the streets and violent protests stopped traffic in many parts of the city.

Media Revolution

Since I was stuck in my club suite for many hours, I sat in front of the TV and flipped through the channels. It seemed that there are multiple, competing channels catering to almost every niche, whim and taste---from news, sports, comedy and talk shows to channels dedicated to cooking, fashion, fitness, music, business, religion, local languages and cultures etc. There has been a big media revolution during the Musharraf era that I hadn't seen before. It seems that this media revolution has had a profound influence on how many young people talk, dress and behave, emulating the outspoken media personalities, actors, preachers, singers, sportsmen, celebrities and fashion models. In addition to a smorgasbord of TV channels born out of a surge in advertising spending, there are many newspapers and tabloids, and serious and glossy magazines, and many FM radio stations providing local news, sports, weather and traffic.

Visit to a Friend's House

We were invited to lunch at SQ's house in Defense on Sunday. SQ is the friend who let us use his apartment and driver in Dubai. This close friend of ours also has a special connection with us because he was my classmate at NED Engineering College and his sister and his wife were my wife's classmates at Dow Medical College in Karachi. He had invited several classmates from our common alma mater of NED Engineering College in Karachi. Several of them could not attend because of the widespread flooding and power outages, but seven or eight still showed up. The street in front of SQ's house was flooded and we had to tiptoe around the big water puddle to step into his nice house in an upscale neighborhood. The grid power was out when we entered and only a few lights and fans were running off of the UPS. The gas-fired generator could not be started because it would significantly reduce the gas pressure and shut down the cooking range in the kitchen. The choice was between cooking and air conditioning. Finally, when the signal came from the kitchen that the cooking was done, the generator and the air conditioning were turned on for the comfort of the hosts and the guests. The discomfort from the lack of air conditioning during cooking was more than amply compensated by the delicious food we ate for lunch at SQ's house.

Private Power and Co-generation

As the conversation turned to power problems and every one jumped in to express their anger and frustration, I asked them if they can do something about it rather than complain? My friend RD, the civic activist, joined in and got the rest of the group to acknowledge that they are indeed among the top 1% of Pakistan's elite in terms of their education, income and social status. That begged the question as to why they can not do something about a problem that affects their daily lives so profoundly? Since they all live in the same upscale neighborhood in Defense, is it possible for them to try and set up a private power plant which can fill their needs and still make surplus power available to the grid? RD mentioned that he was working with a client who has just 10MW extra power to connect the plant to the grid and sell the power to KESC, the local power utility. If there were a hundred private plants like it, each with ten surplus megawatts, it could easily add up to a thousand megawatts extra power for Karachi, closing the demand-supply gap significantly.

Meeting with Karachi's Elite

On Monday, my NGO friend RD and his wife invited me to lunch at the Sindh Club with Mr. Ardeshir Cowasjee, a popular Karachi columnist and commentator whose writings I have admired. Mr. Cowasjee has been a strong supporter of many of my friend's civic activities and written about the issues faced by Karachi-ites as their city is going through significant new development. After spending a few minutes with him, it became obvious that Mr. Cowasjee is far more articulate and effective as a writer than he is in a face-to-face one-on-one conversation. The most memorable part of the conversation was Mr. Cowasjee's mention of another Sindh club member who had complained against him for calling him a Charya. Following lunch, I was introduced to a number of people who are considered as the city elite in Karachi. Some of them were journalists and talk-show hosts on Cable TV, others were business executives, senior bureaucrats, artists and architects. I did not find my conversation with them particularly enlightening, stimulating or inspirational.

Beach Day

Tuesday was beach day when we headed out to Hawke's Bay in Karachi. One of my nephews, who works for British Petroleum, reserved a BP hut for the family to enjoy the hot summer day on the beach. When we left, my sister's home was without electricity or water, just as most of the other homes in the city. But the BP hut had the luxury of power and water. The access roads to the beach were very crowded after the pavements were badly damaged by the monsoon rains. The construction crews were out there repairing the edge of some sections of the road that had collapsed and the traffic in both directions was sharing only one side of the divided road. I saw more trucks, beautifully painted and adorned, than I have ever seen in my life, parked on both sides of the road. At the beach, the water was comfortably warm and nice and a pleasant breeze was blowing from the Arabian sea as we slowly stepped into the water, fearing the presence of jellyfish in July's warm waters. While the children enjoyed camel rides and frolicking on the sandy beach, I decided to take a walk along the beach. Later, we enjoyed a picnic style lunch and returned to the club by late afternoon using a different, less crowded route that our driver learned from other drivers.

Tuesday evening, my friend MK invited me and a number of other friends to dinner at the Club I was staying at. Several friends showed up and we had a good time talking politics, among other things. Passions ran high briefly as the topic of Musharraf's possible trial and the campaign against the Taliban came up. One of the friends showed strong emotional support for holding Musharraf to account for Lal Masjid which has become a rallying cry for many supporters of the right-wing religious parties in Pakistan. The polarization was quite obvious on the question of the performance of the current leadership in comparison with Musharraf, though almost all expressed reservations about the current leadership and the direction of the country.

The Upscale Crowd

My family and I spent most of Wednesday with FN and his family, starting with lunch at the Gymkhana Club. Karachi Gymkhana Club is one of the oldest private clubs in Karachi that was founded by the British colonial rulers and remained exclusive for them for a while. It was not until the early 1950s that a Pakistani became the president of the club. It's an old colonial style building on a large piece of prime real estate in the most expensive part of Karachi, located close to two five-star hotels and the American consulate. After a sumptuous lunch, my wife headed out for shopping with my friend's wife and their son showed me and my daughters around town, mostly the upscale area near the water front. We passed by the Creek Club, stopped at the Defense Golf Club and Resort, the Clifton beach and later stopped at the Emaar Crescent project to tour their tastefully decorated model units on display.
This part of town could be easily mistaken for resort communities in California or Florida. The first release of the Emaar Crescent project offered one, two and three bedroom world-class, beach-front luxury apartments ranging in price from $300,000 to $500,000 sold out quickly last year. The Crescent community will be a self-contained community with its own gyms, tracks, water, power, schools, parks, libraries and shopping etc. A lot of the speculators probably bought these units in the expectation of rising real estate prices to make a quick profit. But the real estate bubble burst in Karachi as it did elsewhere. The second release is now underway but the prices have not gone up as some expected, nor has this release been sold out like the last one.

Hospital Emergency Room Visit

As we prepared to attend the wedding of my cousin's daughter on Wednesday evening, my younger daughter complained of fever and stiff neck that sent alarm bells ringing in my physician wife's head. She suspected the worst, forcing us to make an emergency room visit around 10PM. The Agha Khan University Hospital emergency room is where our driver took us. FN volunteered to join us there to help us guide through the process. Fortunately for us, the hospital procedures and staff were quite comparable to what we have seen in California. Without filling out any paperwork, the triage nurse and doctor examined my daughter and quickly concluded that it is not the horrible ailment that my wife feared. But they still went ahead and ordered blood tests to confirm their conclusion. The whole thing cost under Rs. 2000, a far cry from emergency room bills in the US. The prescription drugs were even cheaper, just under Rs. 150 for a full course of antibiotics. It turned out to be a relatively quick and painless process because of the procedures, the equipment and the skilled and friendly staff at the emergency room. On our way back from the emergency room at 1AM, I stopped at a McDonald's restaurant to pick up a couple of big macs and I was astonished to see customers waiting in lines at such late hour. It seemed to me that most Karachi-ites never sleep or sleep very little.

Our Alma Maters

On Thursday, my activist friend RD's wife gave us a tour of both NED Engineering University's old campus in the city which now houses the Department of Architecture headed by Professor Noman Ahmed, and Dow Medical College now known as Dow University of Health Sciences. The visits brought back many fond memories for both of us as we walked on the hallowed grounds of our alma maters and took many pictures. Our daughters were particularly interested in seeing their parents colleges and thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity. Professor Noman Ahmed explained to us the work he is doing in restoring the old colonial NED building to preserve its grand, historical edifice, complete with its tall stone masonry chimney that has symbolized NED for generations. Their passion and commitment came through loud and clear as he and one of his female lieutenants talked about their efforts. Later in the day, I went to visit the NED University's new campus near Karachi University, about 20 miles from the downtown campus. There I had lunch with Professor MN of Electrical Engineering department. MN and I both graduated from NED in 1974 and he chose to serve his alma mater, after attending graduate school at Duke, while I decided to stay and work in the United States. MN gave me a tour of the campus and I met several students who recognized me because of PakAlumni social network which has hundreds of NEDians as members. MN talked about his successes and frustrations in his teaching career in particular, and the politics in general. MN has the distinction of being well remembered and highly regarded by many of his past students who have now become quite successful in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. By all accounts, he is indeed a very dedicated teacher and mentor of many successful NEDians. In many ways, MN shares the idealism of my other activist friend RD in Karachi, and he is an activist in his own right and fights for the causes he believes in.

We spent most of the day Friday saying goodbyes, packing up and getting ready for our departure to Beijing on Friday night.

I Am Optimistic

Overall, we had a good time in Pakistan. It offered me and my wife a great opportunity to renew contacts with many good friends and close relatives, and for my daughters to get a closer look at their parent's culture and country of origin. We immensely enjoyed the extraordinary hospitality extended to us by all of our family and friends. In spite of all their current difficulties and multiple crises they are facing, I have faith in Pakistanis' abilities to deal with their problems. I felt their pain, but I remain optimistic about Pakistan's future.

Related Links:

Karachi, Pakistan

Power Shortages in Pakistan

America's Best Run Cities

Karachi: The Urban Frontier

Garbage Collection in Karachi

Pakistan's Electricity Crisis

Emaar Bullish on Pakistan

Karachi Dreams Big

Cost of Power Outages in India

July in Dubai

My family and I stopped in Dubai for a three-day vacation in July on our way to Pakistan from the United States. As I was planning the Dubai stopover, a friend of mine who maintains an apartment in Dubai for his frequent business trips there heard about it, and offered to me the use of his apartment and his driver for the duration of our stay. This friendly gesture proved to be extremely convenient and valuable for us. Not only did the driver meet us at the airport upon arrival, he stayed with us and showed us around the usual places such as Palm Jumeirah, Burj ul Arab, Atlantis hotel and resort, various shopping malls, etc. He also arranged for a desert safari for us. In addition to the tourism, my family and I got a chance to meet an old friend of mine and his family, who have been settled in Dubai for the last thirty years. He heads the sales office of a major European company there.

Our Dubai arrival was very smooth. The plane landed at 4AM, about a half hour earlier than scheduled, and the immigration and customs procedure were very quick and efficient. As we came out of the airport terminal building, our eyeglasses were all fogged up by the heat and humidity of Dubai. We had to take them off to look for the driver who was supposed to receive us. He did arrive shortly after, and took us to the apartment and got us settled in there. On our way, we heard the muezzin's calls for the morning prayers from several mosques, reminding us that we were in a Muslim nation. We stopped at a Pakistani restaurant, and picked up a breakfast of desi omelets and paratha and ate at the apartment.

After resting for a few hours, we ventured out to the Dubai city mall. As we drove from the apartment, the city appeared to be enveloped in a rather thick haze that the driver suggested was dust. The roads were wide, and we could see many shiny new buildings, and few cranes on either side of the road. The traffic seemed fairly light for a normal business day. We headed to the Mall's food court for lunch. Many of the restaurants were familiar, including KFC, Burger King, Krispy Kreme and Subway, but we decided to go for the middle eastern fare at a Lebanese place. The food was quite good and reasonably priced. Since I needed a GSM cell phone and a local SIM, the driver took me to a phone company outlet, where an Indian gentleman was kind enough to suggest buying at Carrefour at a much better price, which I did. The cell phone was activated within an hour after installing the SIM and I was able to make several calls, including overseas calls.

The mall has many European stores selling designer merchandise, along with many small stores carrying all kinds of things ranging from apparel to jewelry, shoes, flowers, toys, electronics and food items. The stores selling expensive European designer apparel and accessories such as expensive bags, shoes and jewelry appear to be particularly favored by the rich Emirati women who are quite fashion-conscious. One could see glimpses of many of them, even though some were covered from head to toe, wearing expensive designer stuff visible underneath their black covers.

In the evening, my wife and daughters checked out some of the desi apparel and jewelry stores, and later we visited my old friend's apartment. He had arranged for dinner at a restaurant called Barbecue Delight that offered a delectable buffet with a wide selection including chicken tikka, seekh kabab, nihari, naan, biryani etc. We enjoyed the food and talked about how things are going in Dubai. He confirmed for us what we had heard and observed; the business is significantly down from a year ago, the rents have come down, the real estate prices are slipping, many people have lost their jobs and left the Emirate, some with the keys in their cars abandoned at the airport. It was reported earlier this year that Dubai police have found at least 3,000 automobiles -- sedans, SUVs-- abandoned outside Dubai International Airport in the prior four months. Dubai and other emirates in the UAE have been heavily criticized for their labor laws that badly treat the poor immigrant labor building the infrastructure. In 2007, the New York Times reported that "after several years of unprecedented labor unrest, the government is seeking peace with this army of sweat-stained migrants who make local citizens a minority in their own country and sustain one of the world's great building booms. Regulators here have enforced midday sun breaks, improved health benefits, upgraded living conditions and cracked down on employers brazen enough to stop paying workers at all."

There have also been reports of bailout of debt-ridden Dubai by Abu Dhabi recently, when Dubai was unable to honor a $10 billion bond in June, 2009. Another default is likely on a $10 billion bond coming due in December this year. Dubai has a reported debt load of over $80 billion that must be handled even as the property values continue to fall. These issues of debt and falling property prices will continue to be a drag on Dubai’s recovery. However, as the crisis unfolds, Dubai does have an advantage: no other city in the Middle East has the vision or the infrastructure to act as a services hub for the rest of the oil-rich region, which is expected to rebound from this global recession faster than other areas. With $600 billion of foreign exchange reserves and sovereign investments, the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is a part, has considerable resources to support Dubai's recovery.

Continuing our vacation the next day, we saw more malls including the Mall of the Emirates and Ibn Batoota mall. These malls did not seem crowded. But there were quite a few kids at the indoor ski resort at the Mall of the Emirates. The artificial ski slope seemed to be fairly tame, like a beginner bunny slope at ski resorts in the Sierras, perfect for the curious young ones wanting to explore skiing and snowboarding. We then went to see the newly built Palm Jumeirah, a man-made island about 5 km in diameter. It covers an area of 600 hectares and was reclaimed from the sea. Once complete, the development will increase the Dubai shoreline by 75 km. We saw a lot of apartments and villas on Jumeirah that appear to be empty. Many are said to have been bought by foreign, non-resident speculators who who were hoping to make a quick buck by flipping these properties prior to the bubble burst.

While most environmentalists believe Palm Jumeirah is a disaster, it is a great engineering feat and aesthetically quite pleasing, particularly the Atlantis hotel and resorts are beautiful. There is a very impressive aquarium inside Atlantis that features live sharks. But there are persistent concerns that most of the reclaimed development will come under water as the sea level rises with global warming later this century.

We headed out to Sharjah for the desert safari in the afternoon. We were driven in a Toyota Landrover, and as we approached the desert, the driver partially let out the air from the tires to get better traction on sand. It was quite a thrill ride over the sand dunes and felt much like a roller coaster ride. The driver drove up to the top of the sand dunes, and then rapidly came down the other side, slipping and sliding all the way.

Following the sand dune adventure in Sharjah, there were camel rides, dinner and belly dance at a camp in Dubai. The driver explained to us that the camp is located in Dubai because the Emir of Sharjah has forbidden drinking and dancing in his emirate.

It was an enjoyable few days for us in Dubai. It's an emirate like no other, allowing night clubs to operate along with its many mosques. In spite of its current economic difficulties and concerns about labor practices, it has the potential to come back strong because of its multiple advantages, such as many first-world businesses, excellent infrastructure and its ambitious leadership. It represents a place where the average people of South Asia and the Middle East can get a taste of how the other half in the first world lives, and hope to aim higher to improve their own lives in their native lands.

Related Links:

Dubai Incorporated

South Asians Flee Dubai as Economy Slows

UAE Investments in Pakistan

Global Warming Impact

Bye-Bye, Dubai

Demolishing Indian War Myths about Pakistan

While outwardly claiming to dismiss Pakistan as a defeated and failed state, the Indians continue to show by their actions that they are paranoid about their much smaller neighbor to the West by maintaining most of their troops close to the border with Pakistan.

For example, twenty four of the thirty three Indian infantry divisions are near Pakistan's borders. All three of India's armored divisions are poised against Pakistan. All three of India's mechanized divisions are positioned on Pakistani borders.

If Indians have such an impeccable record of successes against Pakistan in past wars as they claim, why is it that, in practice, they are so fearful of their little neighbor? Why are they planning to increase defense spending by 50% to spend $40 billion, 33% more than the entire 2009-10 Pakistani budget of $30 billion, on defense in 2009-10? Could it be that, in their heart of hearts, they really do not believe their own propaganda and their claims of victory over Pakistan are really hollow?

Let's examine this reality in a little more detail:

With the special exception of 1971( where Indira exploited the political follies by Bhutto and Mujib and RAW infiltrated the Awami League), Indian military has not scored any clear victories over Pakistan.

Even in 1971, Pakistanis inflicted heavy damage on Indian military.

"This airforce(the PAF), is second to none"
"The air war lasted two weeks and the Pakistanis scored a
three-to-one kill ratio, knocking out 102 Russian-made Indian jets and losing thirty-four airplanes of their own. I'm certain about the figures because I went out several times a day in a chopper and counted the wrecks below." "They were really good, aggressive dogfighters and proficient in gunnery and air combat tactics. I was damned impressed. Those guys just lived and breathed flying. "

(General (Retd.) Chuck Yeager (USAF) , Book: Yeager, the
Autobiography).

In 1965, Pakistanis really whipped India's rear end.

"Pakistan claims to have destroyed something like 1/3rd the Indian Air Force, and foreign observers, who are in a position to know say that Pakistani pilots have claimed even higher kills than this; but the Pakistani Air Force are being scrupulously honest in evaluating these claims. They are crediting Pakistan Air Force only those killings that can be checked from other sources."

Roy Meloni,
American Broadcasting Corporation
September 15, 1965.

1965 War, the Inside Story by R.D. Pradhan:

In Chapter 8 titled "Of Cowardice and Panic", the author describes the cowardice of Maj. Gen. Niranjan Prasad, the Indian general commanding officer in Lahore sector. When the general was fired upon by Pakistani forces, he "ran away". "On learning that, Lt. Gen. Harbakash Singh and the corps commander drove in a Jonga to the battlefront. Army commander found that the enemy (PAF) air attack had created a havoc on G.T. Road. (Indian) Vehicles were burning and several vehicles of 15 Division abandoned on the road, the drivers having run away, leaving some of the engines still running. Maj. Gen. Niranjan Prasad was hiding in a recently irrigated sugar cane field. As described by Harabakash Singh: "He (Prasad) came out to receive us, with his boots covered with wet mud. He had no head cover, nor was he wearing any badges of his rank. He had stubble on his face, not having shaved." Seeing him in such a stage, Harbakhash Singh asked him: "Whether he was the General Officer commanding a division or a coolie? Why had he removed badges of rank and not shaved? Niranjan Prasad had no answer."

Pradhan's book contains many different entries by Indian Defense Minister Y.B. Chavan. A Sept 9, 1965 entry reads: Had a very hard day on all fronts. Very fierce counter-attacks mounted and we are required to withdraw in Kasur area. COAS was somewhat uncertain of himself. I suggested to him that he should go in forward areas so that he will be in touch of realities. He said he would go next day.

In Line of Duty: A Soldier Remembers, Lt Gen Harbakhsh Singh reveals that not only did Gen Chowdhury play a very small role in the entire campaign, he was so nervous as to be on the verge of losing half of Punjab to Pakistan, including the city of Amritsar. Harbakhsh describes, in clinical detail, how our own offensive in the Lahore sector had come unhinged. The general commanding the division on Ichchogil canal fled in panic, leaving his jeep, its wireless running and the briefcase containing sensitive documents that were then routinely read on Radio Pakistan during the war. Singh wanted to court martial him, Chowdhury let him get away with resignation.

According to Shekhar Gupta, the editor of Indian Express, Harbkhash Singh recounts that a bigger disaster struck a bit to the south where the other division cracked up in assault, just as it encountered a bit of resistance. Several infantry battalions, short on battle inoculation, deserted and Singh gives a hair-raising account – and confirmation of a long-debated rumor – that Chowdhury panicked so badly he ordered him to withdraw to a new defensive line behind the Beas, thereby conceding half of Punjab to Pakistan. Singh describes the conversation with Chowdhury at Ambala where he refused to carry out the order, asking his chief to either put it down in writing or visit the front and take charge of the battle.

The London Daily Mirror reported in 1965:

"There is a smell of death in the burning Pakistan sun. For it was here that India's attacking forces came to a dead stop.

"During the night they threw in every reinforcement they could find. But wave after wave of attacks were repulsed by the Pakistanis"

"India", said the London Daily Times, "is being soundly beaten by a nation which is outnumbered by four and a half to one in population and three to one in size of armed forces."

In Times reporter Louis Karrar wrote:

"Who can defeat a nation which knows how to play hide and seek with death".

USA - Aviation week & space technology - December 1968 issue.

"For the PAF, the 1965 war was as climatic as the Israeli victory over the Arabs in 1967. A further similarity was that Indian air power had an approximately 5:1 numerical superiority at the start of the conflict. Unlike the Middle East conflict, the Pakistani air victory was achieved to a large degree by air-to-air combat rather than on ground. But it was as absolute as that attained by Israel.

UK - Air International - November - 1991

" the average PAF pilot is almost certainly possessed of superior skills when compared with, say, an average American pilot. As to those who are rated above average, they compare favorably to the very best."

Encyclopaedia of Aircraft printed in several countries by Orbis publications - Volume 5

"Pakistan's air force gained a remarkable victory over India in this brief 22 day war exploiting its opponents weaknesses in exemplary style - Deeply shaken by reverse, India began an extensive modernisation and training program, meanwhile covering its defeat with effective propaganda smoke screen.

To prove its air superiority, PAF put its entire fleets on show for inspection after BOTH of the wars in presence of world dignitaries and aviation community. The five times bigger IAF should have been able to annihilate the tiny PAF to prevent such displays.

Yoichi Shimatsu, a Japanese journalist and former editor of Japan Times, wrote as follows about LeT and Kargil:

Blaming the Lahore-based Lashkar is all-too easy since the outfit was once the West Point of the Kashmir insurgency. The Army of the Righteous, as it is known in English, was a paramilitary force par excellence that routinely mauled the Indian Army along the Himalayan ridge that forms the Line of Control of divided Kashmir. In an attack on the strategic town of Kargil in late spring 1999, Lashkar broke through India’s alpine defense line and came close to forcing New Delhi to the negotiating table.

Along the sawtooth LoC, Lashkar is respected by professional soldiers on both side. A Pakistani hero who fought on the Baltistan heights, Corporal Ahmed, told me of his admiration for the stoicism of these jihadis, who wore sandals to battle in the snow. At a checkpoint in Indian-controlled Kargil, an army captain wearing a Sikh turban said frankly that nobody in the Indian Army could fight man-to-man against Lashkar.

Lashkar earned its reputation in clean-fought mountain warfare, pitting lightly armed guerrillas against Indian armor and superior firepower.

In its finest hours, these fighters would never consider the dirty tactics used against civilians in Mumbai, for example, the gangland-style executions using a shot to the back of a kneeling captive’s head. That is more typical of the Mumbai underworld.

Respected American South Asia expert Stephen Cohen of Washington's Brookings Institution recently told his audience: "Not a few Indian generals and strategists have told me that if only America would strip Pakistan of its nuclear weapons then the Indian army could destroy the Pakistan army and the whole thing would be over."

These remarks sharply contrast with the volumes being written in the West, particularly in the United States, about Pakistan's "obsession" with India. Pakistan is being incessantly lectured by the Western leaders and media to stop worrying about the security threat from India and focus exclusively on its western frontiers and the Taliban. Ignoring the past and current realities, these positions are often echoed by some of the liberal media editorials and commentators in Pakistan as well, in spite of substantial evidence to the contrary.

The facts on the ground speak louder than words. These facts clearly show that Indians are far more obsessed with Pakistan than Pakistan is with India. Having numerically and physically a much smaller military, Pakistan does have greater reason to be paranoid of Indian military intentions, and be prepared to deal with them.

Related Links:

Foreign Origin of India's Agni Missiles

India's Military Buildup

1965 War, the Inside Story

In Line of Duty: A Soldier Remembers by Gen Harbakhsh Singh

Challenges of Indian Democracy

India's Female Genocide

Dangers of Military Myths

Pakistan Military Business

India-Pakistan Military Balance

Global Firepower

Chuck Yeager on Pakistan Air Force

India's Research and Analysis Wing

GupShup Forum

RAW's Involvement in East Pakistan

Indian Arms Build Up Prelude to South Asian Arms Race

India is planning to raise its military budget by 50% to almost $40 billion, making military expenditure 3% of the annual gross domestic product (GDP), the Indian defense minister said. In contrast to India's planned defense expenditures, Pakistan's entire 2009-10 budget amounts to little over $30 billion.

"Our current defense spending is lower than 2% [of GDP]...and it should be at least 3%," A. K. Antony said at a meeting with top military commanders on Tuesday, without specifying a time-frame. India raised its defense spending in February by 10% to $26.5 billion for the fiscal year 2008-2009, but it still fell below 2% of GDP for the first time in at least a decade.

India's neighbors and long-term rivals, Pakistan and China, allocate around 3.5% and 4.3% of GDP to defense, respectively. The minister said top priority must be given to the modernization of the Indian Armed Forces and half of the defense budget should be allocated for the purchase of new military equipment.

Currently two-thirds of India's budget is allocated for military, paramilitary, police, various security forces and debt servicing. That leaves one-third for everything else, including infrastructure development projects, education, healthcare, poverty alleviation, and various human services. This new arms buildup by India will leave even less for what India needs most: to lift hundreds of millions of its citizens from abject poverty, hunger, squalor and disease.

Such an arms buildup by India is sure to fuel an arms race that South Asians can ill afford with widespread abject poverty, hunger, malnutrition and very low levels of human development.

The human cost of this unfortunate escalation by India will mainly be born by its most vulnerable citizens who will probably lose the few crumbs of bread they are forced to live on now. It will continue the horrible sanitation situation that forces two-thirds of Indians to defecate in the open that spreads disease and kills millions of various diseases each year.

India has failed to use a period of high economic growth to lift tens of millions of people out of poverty, falling far short of China’s record in protecting its population from the ravages of chronic hunger, United Nations officials said on Tuesday. Last year, British Development Minister Alexander contrasted the rapid growth in China with India's economic success - highlighting government figures that showed 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%.

The World Hunger Index of 88 countries published by IFPRI last year ranked India at 66 while Pakistan was slightly better at 61 and Bangladesh slightly worse at 70.

In the context of unprecedented economic growth (9-10 percent annually) and national food security, over 60 percent of Indian children are wasted, stunted, underweight or a combination of the above. As a result, India ranks number 62 along with Bangladesh at 67 in the PHI (Poverty Hunger Index)ranking out of a total of 81 countries. Both nations are included among the low performing countries in progress towards MDG1 (Millennium Development Goals) with countries such as Nepal (number 58), Ethiopia (number 60), or Zimbabwe (number 74).

Pakistan at 45 ranks well ahead of India at 62, and it is included in the medium performing countries. PHI is a new composite indicator – the Poverty and Hunger Index (PHI) – developed to measure countries’ performance towards achieving MDG1 on halving poverty and hunger by 2015. The PHI combines all five official MDG1 indicators, including a) the proportion of population living on less than US$ 1/day, b) poverty gap ratio, c) share of the poorest quintile in national income or consumption, d) prevalence of underweight in children under five years of age, and d) the proportion of population undernourished.

The stinging criticism of India’s performance comes only two weeks after the Congress party-led alliance was overwhelmingly voted back into office. Its leaders had campaigned strongly on their achievement of raising India’s economic growth to 9 per cent and boosting rural welfare. With the exception of Kerala, the situation in India is far worse than the Human Development Index suggests. According to economist Amartya Sen, who won the Nobel Prize for his work on hunger, India has fared worse than any other country in the world at preventing recurring hunger.

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.

Economically resurgent India is witnessing a rapid unfolding of a female genocide in the making across all castes and classes, including the upper caste rich and the educated. The situation is particularly alarming among upper-caste Hindus in some of the urban areas of Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, specially in parts of Punjab, where there are only 300 girls for every 1,000 boys, according to Laura Turquet, ActionAid's women's rights policy official.

I see hunger and poverty and lack of opportunity as the root cause of most of the ethnic, religious and other forms of violence. The situation is further complicated when nations with the largest number of poor and hungry choose to spend more on military than on fighting poverty, hunger and disease.

In fact, letting millions die of hunger each year, is what Amatya Sen calls "quiet violence", a form of ongoing brutality that claims far more lives than all of the other causes of violence combined.

Neither Pakistan nor India can or should continue their misguided arms race, with India using China as its excuse, and Pakistan citing India's current arms buildup, the largest in its history. In Poverty-Hunger Index(PHI), designed to measure progress toward UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), China, ranked 31, is closest to achieving these goals, followed by laggards such as Pakistan at 45, India at 62, and Bangladesh at 67. And clearly, India, lagging behind both China and Pakistan in terms of basic social indicators of hunger and poverty, is fueling this crazy South Asian arms race. India continues to show a total lack of leadership on this front.

The South Asian rivals need to recognize, in words and in deeds, that their people are their biggest resource, who must be developed and made much more productive to make the nations more competitive and powerful economically, politically and militarily.

Related Links:

Challenges of Indian Democracy

India's Female Genocide

World Military Spending

Pakistan Military Business

India-Pakistan Military Balance

Chuck Yeager on Pakistan Air Force

Was McNamara a War Criminal?

"Had we lost, we would have been tried as war criminals," said late Robert Strange McNamara, a former US defense secretary, who died today at age 93. One of the key architects and chief orchestrator of the deadly Vietnam war was quoting his commanding officer General Curtis Le May on the US firebombing of Japan that set entire cities ablaze. Just one night of intense Tokyo bombing by Americans is estimated to have burned 100,000 civilians to death.

Talking about the Vietnam war in the 2003 documentary "The Fog of War", McNamara acknowledged the irreparable damage done by the defoliants, and the human cost of the bombing of Vietnam, where "more bombs were dropped than in the whole of WWII." The Vietnam War cost the United States 58,000 lives and 350,000 casualties. It also resulted in between one and two million Vietnamese deaths.

Here are eleven lessons from the Vietnam War that McNamara spelled out in the "Fog of War" documentary:

1. We misjudged then — and we have since — the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries … and we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions.
2. We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our own experience … We totally misjudged the political forces within the country.
3. We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values.
4. Our judgments of friend and foe, alike, reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders.
5. We failed then — and have since — to recognize the limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces, and doctrine.
6. We failed, as well, to adapt our military tactics to the task of winning the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture.
7. We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale military involvement … before we initiated the action.
8. After the action got under way, and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course … we did not fully explain what was happening, and why we were doing what we did.
9. We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. Our judgement of what is in another people's or country's best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.
10. We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action … should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community.
11. We failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions … At times, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world.

In a 1995 interview with The Associated Press, McNamara confessed that "we of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of our country. But we were wrong. We were terribly wrong." He never admitted responsibility for the Vietnam war but the terrible cost in terms of human life probably haunted him until his death.

After retiring as Defense secretary from the Johnson administration, Mr. McNamara served as the president of the World Bank with the charter to alleviate poverty. In an interview with Doug Saunders of Canada's Globe and Mail, McNamara decided to break his silence on Iraq. When Saunders told him that his carefully enumerated lists of historic lessons from Vietnam were in danger of being ignored, he agreed, and added that he was deeply frustrated to see history repeating itself.

"We're misusing our influence," he said. "It's just wrong what we're doing. It's morally wrong, it's politically wrong, it's economically wrong."

While he did not want to talk on the record about specific military decisions made Mr. Rumsfeld, he said the United States is fighting a war that he believes is totally unnecessary and has managed to destroy important relationships with potential allies. "There have been times in the last year when I was just utterly disgusted by our position, the United States' position vis-à-vis the other nations of the world."

Will the US leaders learn from America's historical mistakes and the eleven lessons from wars as spelled out by McNamara in the "Fog of War"? I am not too sanguine about it, but I'd like to hope so.

In spite of McNamara's introspection, candor and regrets about his role in Word War II and Vietnam War later in life, it is unlikely that the future historians will judge him kindly.


Here's a video clip from The Fog of War:

Female Genocide Unfolding in India

The land of former Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi is killing its daughters by the millions. Economically resurgent India is witnessing a rapid unfolding of a female genocide in the making across all castes and classes, including the upper caste rich and the educated. The situation is particularly alarming among upper-caste Hindus in some of the urban areas of Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, specially in parts of Punjab, where there are only 300 girls for every 1,000 boys, according to Laura Turquet, ActionAid's women's rights policy official.



ActionAid collaborated with Canada's International Development Research Center (IDRC) to conduct research and produced a report called "Disappearing Daughters".

The report cites findings from sites across five states in north and northwest India reveal that the sex ratio of girls to boys has not only worsened but is accelerating compared to the last national census in 2001. One of the reasons for this accelerated rate of female feticide is the abuse of ultrasound technology to determine the gender of the unborn. The purveyors of the ultrasound business in every city, town and village of India entice parents by telling them to "spend 500 rupees now and save 50,000 rupees later.” The cost of the ultrasound scan is Rs. 500 and the required dowry for marrying daughters off exceeds Rs. 50,000.00.

And everywhere else, with the exception of Rajasthan, already low figures are continuing to slide. Even in Rajasthan, the proportion of girls is well below what should be the norm of around 950 girls born for every 1000 boys.

ActionAid has also found that girls are more likely to be born but less likely to survive in areas with more limited access to public health services and modern ultrasound technology. In rural Morena and Dhaulpur, deliberate neglect of girls, including allowing the umbilical cord to become infected, is used as a way to dispose of unwanted daughters.

Such neglect ensures fewer surviving daughters, with the best chances of being born and surviving as a girl depending on the birth order in your family.

All survey sites showed a decline in the proportion of girls among second-born children. And in three of the survey sites, for every 1000 third-born boys, there were fewer than 750 girls.

The problem of female infanticide is not just limited to the states in Northern India. In the southern state of Tamil Nadu, female infanticide is so frequent that all second daughters are known as "the girl born for the burial pit", according to a documentary produced by ABC Australia.

The Indian diaspora is not immune from the cultural bias against female children, either. The male-female ratios of British Indians are also getting increasingly skewed in favor of male children. Since the 1970s, the at-birth male-female ratio of British Indians has dramatically change from 103:100 to 114.4:100, excluding the birth of the first or the second child.


Here are the latest statistics from the CIA's The World Factbook on male-female ratios at-birth in India, Pakistan and selected nations:

India at birth: 1.12 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.1 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.06 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.9 male(s)/female
total population: 1.06 male(s)/female (2009 est.)

China at birth: 1.1 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.13 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.06 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.91 male(s)/female
total population: 1.06 male(s)/female (2009 est.)

Pakistan at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.06 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.05 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.88 male(s)/female
total population: 1.04 male(s)/female (2009 est.)

United Kingdom
at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.05 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.03 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.76 male(s)/female
total population: 0.98 male(s)/female (2009 est.)

United States
at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.04 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.75 male(s)/female
total population: 0.97 male(s)/female (2009 est.)


The at-birth male-female ratios in Pakistan are comparable to most of the rest of the world, including the West, but the Indian ratios are the worst in the world. In spite of China's one child policy, the ratios in China are better than India's.

India Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh, who has three daughters, has recognized the accelerating horror of female genocide in India. In response, he has launched the “Save the Girl Child” campaign. He has said that no nation could claim to be part of a civilized world if it condoned female feticide. An estimated 50 million girls have been sacrificed because of son preference.

"Census figures illustrate that in some of the richer states the problem is most acute. These states include Punjab which had only 798 girls (per 1,000 boys), Haryana 819, Delhi 868 and Gujarat 883 girls in the 2001 Census. Growing economic prosperity and education levels have not led to a corresponding mitigation in this acute problem," he said.

"Female illiteracy, obscurantist social practices like child marriage or early marriage, dowry, poor nutritional entitlements, taboos on women in public places make Indian women vulnerable. The patriarchal mindset and preference for male children is compounded by unethical conduct on the part of some medical practitioners," Mr. Singh said.

When the facts of this tragedy are brought up, many defensive Indians offer the examples of famous Indian women like Indra Nooyi, Kalpana Chawla, Saina Nehwal, Kalpana Morparia, Sunita Williams and Naina Lal, and ask how India is still able to produce such women of accomplishment with growing female infanticides. Instead of looking at the accomplished middle-aged Indian women, Indians should compare the at-birth male-female ratios and worry about the fact that India is now killing future Indra Nooyis.

If this female genocide continues unabated, India's male-female ratio will be so badly skewed in a decade or two that girls' families will start demanding dowry to marry off their daughters, representing a fundamental shift in the balance of power. And the contributions of the well-educated and economically string girls will earn new respect by the male-dominated Indian society.

The first step toward correcting a problem is to acknowledge it, as India's prime minister has done. But legislation alone will not help. As early as 1795, female infanticide was declared murder by the initiative of John Duncan, the British East India Company's resident in Benares, according to Dharma Kumar. But the enforcement has been extremely difficult. The key is to couple stricter enforcement with grassroots education effort to change Indian society.

My sincere hope is that men of honor and goodwill such as Manmohan Singh will step up their national campaign to stop this ongoing female genocide in India before it's too late.

Here are a couple of video clips about India's female genocide:




Related Links:

Status of Women in Pakistan

A Woman Speaker: Another Token or Real Change

"Disappearing Daughters"

The World Factbook

India's Save a Girl Child Campaign

Chinese Fireworks Makers Celebrate 4th of July

The Chinese technology will be on full display in the United States as America celebrates its Independence Day today. As the world's factory, China's fireworks industry provides 98 percent of America's overall needs, and 80 percent of the pyrotechnics needed for professional displays. Liu Donghui, the secretary-general of China-based International Fireworks Association, told the USA Today that Liuyang's factories alone produced $1 billion worth of fireworks last year, some $430 million of it to meet overseas orders.

Chinese fireworks business literally booms every 4th of July as millions of pounds of explosives soar as high as a thousand feet in America's skies, creating beautiful patterns of red, white, blue and other colors. The U.S. has celebrated its Independence Day with increasingly spectacular fireworks since the first celebration in 1776 when John Adams ordered that July 4 should be marked with “illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forevermore.”

Fireworks originated in China some 2,000 years ago. China's Liu Yang region of Hunan Province continues to be the factory of the world for fireworks. It is important to remember the geographic origin of fireworks, because often critics of the fireworks industry say that fireworks are produced in China to take advantage of cheap labor. But the reality is that the fireworks industry developed in China long before the modern era of globalization and long before the disparity in east-west wage rates. The rapid industrialization of China during the last two decades has only strengthened its fireworks industry exports.

Pyro Spectaculars, one of the family-run firms that dominate U.S. fireworks, puts on the New York fireworks show, according to the Wall Street Journal. Its chief executive, James Souza, makes several scouting trips to Liu Yang, China, each year to meet with manufacturers about new shells, cardboard balls as wide as 12-inches in diameter, filled with gun powder and chemicals. The rest of the year he spends at a 160-acre World War II military munitions facility in the desert outside Rialto, Calif. There, at Pyro headquarters, he can freely test explosives.

While the basic chemistry of fireworks has not changed much since its early origins in China, there have been dramatic advances in how the pyrotechnic shows are created and managed for their spectacular visual and sound effects synchronized to music. The extravagant pyrotechnic shows have now become a beautiful blend of art and science.

New microchips embedded in shells now make it possible for fireworks to explode at a specific height. Last July 4, Grucci’s of New York wrote “U.S.A.” in the sky as singer Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” played, reports the Wall Street Journal. It’s tricky to get a shell to break precisely so that it looks like an M, not a W. Next year’s goal: high-definition bursts that explode at lower levels but look crisp on TV.

According to the Journal, fireworks companies began using computers in the late 1980s to remotely ignite fireworks with an electric match that makes contact with a gun powder fuse. The gun powder, called “black powder,” launches the shell skyward. When the fuse reaches the explosive matter inside the shell, the firework goes off and the stars explode in a fixed pattern and color. Popular “cakes,” the name for a cluster of fireworks linked with a single fuse that burst at various heights, are called “Apocalypse Now,” “One Bad Mother-in-Law,” and “Dante’s Inferno.”

In addition to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Chinese fireworks, most of the US flags, estimated at $5 million dollars a year, on display on this 4th of July are imported from China as well.

So the Chinese fireworks and flag businesses celebrate 4th of July each year with the Americans by exporting what America needs to have fun on its Independence Day each year.

Fireworks and flags are among the myriad exports from industrialized China that make up about 25% of the Chinese economy, significantly higher than the exports accounting for 15% of India's GDP and only 10% of Pakistani GDP among the less globalized economies in South Asia.

Related Links:

Chinese PLA's Role in Industrialization

China's Checkbook Power