Dr. Sawraj Singh   

IT was the defeat in Afghanistan which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Is history going to repeat itself and America is going to face the same fate in Afghanistan?  At this point it looks very likely that the American fate is not going to be any different than Russia’s fate.  Another question can be asked is that why Afghanistan is different than Iraq?  Why a defeat in Afghanistan is going to have much more impact than the defeat in Iraq?  Iraq was never a mainstream Muslim country.  Iraq was led by the Baathist party which was a socialist party rather than a fundamentalist Islamic party.  Al Qaida entered the conflict later, after the defeat of Saddam Hussein.  Al Qaida is primarily based in the Sunni Muslims who are a minority in Iraq.

In Afghanistan, Taliban have a long history of struggle.  They fought and defeated the Soviet Union.  They engaged in fighting the American and the NATO troops for the last eight years.  Over the last eight years they’ve been getting gradually stronger.  Another thing which is helping Taliban is that they are based in the Pashtuns who are the majority tribe and have always been the dominant force in Afghanistan.  Still another factor is that Taliban have a strong influence in the neighboring Pakistan which has a much bigger population than Iraq.  Today, the Indian subcontinent has the largest population of the Muslims compared to any other region in the World.  The total population of the Muslims in the Indian subcontinent is about 500 million which is larger than the entire population of the Arab countries and Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the World.

As opposed to the Arab countries and Indonesia, Afghanistan is more strategically located. This is almost in the center of South Asia, central Asia and the Middle East.  China and Russia are also close to Afghanistan.  Therefore, an American defeat in Afghanistan can significantly change the global balance of power.  The defeat in Afghanistan will have much more impact than the defeats in Korea, Vietnam or Iraq.  The American strategy of having an alliance of America, India and Israel against China and the Islamic countries will fail and America no longer will remain the only super power of the world.  If America is defeated in Afghanistan then India will reconsider its policy toward America and China and probably will move closer to China.

President Obama advocated withdrawing troops from Iraq and increasing troops in Afghanistan.  The American troops have been increased to about 68,000 in Afghanistan but even that is not enough and the military experts are very pessimistic about the state of the war.  With the increase in the troops comes increase in the causalities.  We also saw in Iraq that the growing number of American casualties turned the American public against the war.  As the number of American causalities is rising in Afghanistan, the public sentiment has already started to turn against the war.  A recent survey showed that more than 50% of the American people now oppose the war in Afghanistan.

Obama had hoped that he could unify the country which was bitterly divided by the Bush’s policies and fight a decisive war in Afghanistan.  Nothing like that really happened.  First the issues of Harvard Professor Gates' arrest and the issue of Sotomayor’s nomination to the supreme court increased racial tensions and the bitter debate on healthcare reform has not only increased divisions between the democrats and the republicans but has also increased divisions between the leftist and the conservative democrats.  The debate over the healthcare reform has come to the front and the issue of war in Afghanistan has taken a back seat.

The recent events in Afghanistan, including the presidential election, have clearly shown that the Taliban are rapidly gaining influence.  The level of violence is now the highest in the eight years.  President Karzai may win the election but already it has become clear that among the Pashtuns he has lost influence considerably.  There are charges of fraud in the voting and his opponents are claiming that in the South, the main base of Taliban, the voter turnout was extremely low, about 10%.  This signals doom for Karzai but also will hasten American defeat there.

[The writer is a physician and Chairman Washington State Network for Human Rights]

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Should water be legislated as a human right?

Thalif Deen

THE growing commercialisation of water - and the widespread influence of the bottling industry worldwide - is triggering a rising demand for the legal classification of one of the basic necessities of life as a human right.

"We definitely need a covenant or [an international] treaty on the right to water so as to establish once and for all that no one on earth must be denied water because of inability to pay," says Maude Barlow, a senior adviser to the President of the U.N. General Assembly, on water issues.

"We’ve got to protect water as a human right," she said, pointing out that the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva would be the most likely venue to propose such a covenant.

But it would be best, she added, if it were ratified by the 192-member General Assembly, currently presided over by Fr. Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, a former Foreign Minister of Nicaragua.

"We need at the United Nations more than a human rights remedy," Barlow told IPS. "We need a plan of action for the General Assembly."

The U.N. says that close to 880 million people - mostly in the developing world - lack adequate access to clean water. By 2030, close to 4 billion people could be living in areas suffering severe water stress, mostly in South Asia and China.

A study commissioned by the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), released in March, said the global market for water supply, sanitation and water efficiency is worth over 250 billion dollars - and is likely to grow to nearly 660 billion dollars by 2020.

Barlow said the Council of Canadians, which she heads, is working with countries promoting the right to water constitutionally.

A plebiscite in Uruguay, held four years ago, led to a referendum resulting in a constitutional amendment singling out water as both a human right and a public service to be delivered on a not-for-profit basis.

A Colombian group called Ecofundo has collected two million signatures in a plebiscite that is expected to lead to a referendum on the right to water.

Patricia Jones, an expert on water and manager of the Environmental Justice Programme at the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, told IPS that the U.S. negotiated against the appointment of a special U.N. rapporteur on the human right to water during a vote at the Human Rights Commission in March 2008.

Still, an independent expert was appointed, with a three-year mandate, to assist member states to identify the scope and content of the human right to water and sanitation.

"The opposition to the human right to water, of the previous U.S. administration, is changing," Jones said.

She quoted U.S. President Barack Obama as saying in his inaugural address early this year: "to the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow."

For the U.S., she pointed out, the economic stimulus package, and other funding, is going to address water availability issues within the U.S. "We do not have a comprehensive water policy at the national level; water is a devolved power of the states, with regulation through the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Quality Act."

But Jones said the U.S. State Department staff participated in recent consultations on the human right to water and sanitation.

Barlow, the senior U.N. adviser on water issues, said: "We are winning some of the battle against the global corporate theft of water."

"In my country [Canada], for instance, 53 municipalities - some of them big cities such as Vancouver and Toronto - have banned bottled water, and bottled water sales have dropped dramatically globally."

Many municipalities worldwide are reversing the privatisation of their water services. The City of Paris, for example, is bringing its water services into the public sphere for the first time ever.

"We are also successfully introducing the notion of water as a public trust in political jurisdictions, asserting public control over this vital resource," Barlow said. However, she noted, "we must be ever vigilant as new forms of private control are being advanced: water markets, water banking, water trading and water speculation are all on the horizon for those who would impose a market model of water allocation in the place of the public trust doctrine."

Barlow said a recent example was the sale of privately traded water rights in Australia (which were introduced as a way to move water use toward sustainability) to a big American investment fund. This means that not only is this water not in public control, it is not even in the hands of Australians any more, she added.

Asked how investors can help solve the world’s water problems, Jones told IPS that investors can ensure that the water services investments they make would bring about the human right to water.

The U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) termed the existing priorities in global water services as "water apartheid," reporting that there was enough water and financial resources to meet the current needs.

Still, it suggested that fully implementing existing legal obligations on the human right to water would go a long way to adjusting funding priorities toward water for the poor.

Some companies, such as Connecticut Water and PepsiCo have adopted a human right to water policy, Jones said.

Barlow said the international community should be watching the "superpowers" who are now looking outside their borders for water supplies - as they did for oil.

She said China is already constructing a pipeline to funnel water from the Tibetan Himalayas.
[Courtesy IPS]

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Potential of exports of Agri-products from Punjab to Arab countries

Dr S. S. Chhina

DEMAND as well as supply of agricultural products is less elastic and prices have little effect on them. Sometimes the exports could not be made not because of lack of demand but lack of supply, as it happened in case of cotton from India. As international trade is carried on the principle of comparative cost, so competitiveness of the product is the basic criteria for export. Punjab being the leading agricultural state of India has poor performance in the field of agricultural export, though the competitiveness has never been a problem for its agricultural products. The table 1 shows how little the export of rice and food articles was there as compared to the other products.

The food production of the state was 25.18 million MT in 2005-06, which was more than ten per cent of total production of India that was 208.60 million MT, this ten per cent production was from only one and half per cent area of India shows the remarkable productivity in the field of agriculture. The table 2 shows per ha output of certain important crops in Punjab and India. This production is much higher even from many developed countries of the world. The assured prices and marketing are assigned as reasons for this higher productivity but productivity of certain crops. Where no incentives and assured prices were provided for the products, the higher productivity was also observed than that of other states of India. Per hectare Production of groundnut was 865 kg, mustard seed 1119 kg, sunflower 1639 kg, potato 17030 kg etc. Even the production of certain fruit products is also much competitive. In the year of 2006-07 production of kinnow was 4.14 lac MT, guava was 1.42 lac MT, pear was 52 th MT and grapes 3699 th MT. Similar is the case of other fruits and vegetables. The main objective to present these figures is only that Punjab is having a very good potential for export of its agricultural products and the reasons not to exploit this potential is not lack of demand and supply but these are somewhat else.

Punjab being the food basket of India, where it had been contributing about 60 per cent of the food grains in the national food stocks. So the area under wheat and paddy had been around 70 per cent of the total area of the state. Recently it was 77 per cent and even among the rest of the cropped area the major crop was fodder because most of the agricultural and non agricultural families are keeping milch animals that are why Punjab is having the highest per capita per day milk availability in India which is still increasing. It was 541 gm in 1981 which increased to 939 gm in 2006-07. As more of the area is occupied by wheat paddy and fodder, the more desired export products like fruits vegetables, oil seed and pulses are having much less area for their production.

It is always in the interest of the consumer that he may pay the reasonable prices and producer may receive the highest share in consumer rupee. Some of the countries are importing certain items because those are cheaper to import than to produce themselves. Arab countries can be a good destination for exports of Punjab. There is need to identify the agricultural products in those countries except Egypt most of other countries are importers of many agro-products from other countries. Some of products are being imported from European and American countries at much higher prices. Iran, Iraq, Libya, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Israel can import certain Agricultural and dairy products at much cheaper rates from Punjab than European and American countries.

The favourable state policies for these exports should have to be adopted in Punjab simultaneously with the provision of adequate infrastructure in Punjab. Similarly Arab importers have to build a confidence regarding speedy transactions and pay back. About six - seven year back govt of Punjab had established Agri-export Corporation but it did little to promote the exports from Punjab as the data has shown. Even it could not provide the in formation regarding perspective buyers and identify the goods.

Recent reports reveal disturbing trends about sustainability of Punjab agriculture. 98.8 percent of cultivable land in the State is already under plough. The present agriculture cropping pattern in the State is dominated by the wheat- paddy rotation (77%) causing degradation in soil fertility and fall in the underground water table. Therefore there is an urgent need to diversify the crop base to include basmati, vegetables, dairy, poultry, fruits, oilseeds, and pulses. High yielding and processable/ short duration legumes, basmati, vegetables and fruits varieties should be identified and promoted for export purposes. Therefore there is a need of taking advantage of the growing importance of vegetables and fruits, animal and fishery products in world agricultural trade and increasing the share of these commodities in our export.

Due to the limited peak level of the productivity, high value produce and value addition of agricultural commodities is very important to increase the income of the farmers and to boost the economy of the state. The integration of production with processing of agricultural products will not only add value to the crops of farmers but will open up big employment opportunities also. Modernized private industries can be developed to produce bread, dalia, atta, maida, suji, biscuits etc in place of whole wheat. Transporting processed wheat products is much more effective than transporting whole grains. To produce value added milk and milk products for the urban centers of northern India dairy industries can be promoted. Basmati rice and vegetables can be taken on the priority list. There is increasing demand for quality seeds in the state. There fore promotion of seed industry is becoming a serious need in Punjab.

I want to suggest that there is a very good potential for export of agro- products like fruits and vegetables, processed goods, food and dairy products. Arab markets are the nearest available market, even the products can be air lifted in the shortest period. The products are to be identified in the perspective markets. Such a work can be done by a govt agency like state Agri-export Corporation. The farmers can not export their product directly but the cooperative marketing, govt agencies and private traders can help and guide to produce the items, those may be competitive regarding prices and quality. The new items like honey, mushroom etc are not appearing in the market because of lack of demand, in spite of the fact that those can be produced efficiently in Punjab. The liaison between Punjab govt and bilateral chambers of commerce of Arab countries can be helpful to explore and exploit these potentials of exports from Punjab.

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