In the last few decades, the issue of development emerged as one of the most debatable questions in South Asia. It was not that the states and societies in this part of the world were disputing development, in fact they badly needed to develop their own social and political structures after liberation from the colonial rule. What made the issue controversial was the difference in interpretation of the term. It was felt that the concept of development should not be reduced to material connotations only, it should also include social and political awareness of the masses so as to enable them making their own decision in their own peculiar circumstances.

To create awareness in a society, which constitutes a much overstated literate population of 34 per cent according to the official statistics, a sound information infrastructure is indispensable. The task becomes more difficult given the monopoly of the state owned electronic media and oligopoly in independent national press media. Do they have the capacity to create social and political awareness? 

To have a debate on media capacity, South Asian peace, development and other issues akin to these Journalists Resource Centre (JRC), initiated a three-day South Asian dialogue last week in the Press Club in collaboration with Punjab Union of Journalists (PUJ) and Press Club (LPC). 

JRC is a non-profit media organisation striving to build professional capacity of the journalists and other sections of civil society in performing their social obligations. So far the organisation has been engaged in 24 such dialogues within the journalist community at the level since May 1997 when it was founded. Lately, It has also been successful in attracting fellow journalists outside to establish its regional chapters in Karachi, Islamabad, Hyderabad and Peshawer. 

Around 100 Journalists and intellectuals from all over the country and delegates from Sri Lanka participated in the South Asian Dialogue. It was split into five operative sessions; development challenges, media and state in Pakistan, social role of media, conflict and peace in South Asia, and sectarian intolerance in Pakistan: peace strategies. The pattern of the dialogue ensured maximum participation of the audience. The experts apprised the audience of the issue under discussion, which was followed by questions and comments from the participants.

While giving a brief description of the organisation’s role and rationale of the dialogue, Executive Director JRC Mohammad Tanveer told that JRC in its two-year operations has constantly been engaged in creating awareness among media-persons and other sections of society through dialogues on issues of national importance. He said the dialogue was held not only to review the JRC performance in two years and also to gauge the capacity of the organisation to operate at the national level.

The proceedings of the inaugural session were commenced by Chairman JRC Board of Governors Mr Rashed Rehman. In his welcome address, he discussed the recent hostilities, which the state unleashed on media people by wrongly implicating them in criminal cases. He was of the opinion that the government was not ready to take any criticism on its deeds. Referring to the recent occurrences in which government came into conflict with Jang and afterwards, the vindication of Najam Sethi, Rehmat Shah Afridi and MAK Lodhi, he said that the journalists with a low profile were intimidated more as they have only a little strength to resist the state oppression. He viewed development and peace as complementary to each other and maintained that the privileged classes should see to the needs and hopes of the masses for their own survival. He said the stress under which people are resorted to commit suicide can also take the form of a resistance against the government. Glancing through the economic problems facing the country, he said that investment was possible only if the productivity in the region was substantial enough and in the absence of skilled worker and development of human resources there were hardly any hopes for development. He also criticised the arm-race in subcontinent which has caused a serious threat to South Asian peace. He said without drastic economic reforms in agrarian and industrial sectors along keen emphasis on human development, things cannot get better for the people

President PUJ Ruman Ehsan in his brief address thanked the audience for participating in the dialogue and hoped that it could bring useful suggestions for a better working of mass media. President LPC Saqlain Imam, after presenting an overview of peace and development situation in South Asia, said that our state enjoys no economic and political sovereignty as most of the decisions were dictated by international monetary institutions. He said in the present circumstances when the governments are getting stronger and states getting weaker, it was all the more important for the independent media to play its due role in peace and development issues.

Renowned economic expert Dr Akmal Hussain gave a very enlightening presentation on poverty, growth and governance. He was of the view that the development challenges facing the country cannot be met unless there are changes in the notions of power and security. Terming it the failure of the ruling elite and not the state if majority of the people do not find access to the basic facilities, he added that that danger and insecurity was not to come from across the border but it could erupt out of people’s deprivation. He said that it was high time for the rulers to stop demonising each other and take measures to ensure citizen’s security by resolving their problems, rather than over-emphasising on national security. 

Focussing the traditions of the region he said our society conceives power as the ability to do for others. However, the present instead of focussing on what can be done ‘for the people’, government accents upon what can be done ‘to the people’. 

Referring to the economic growth in Pakistan he said that in spite of a reasonably high growth rate more than 30 per cent of the population was living below the poverty line. Criticising the Harvard propounded growth and development models he said that those structures have intrinsic flaws which restrain their capacity to erode poverty. While the distribution of the productive assets is highly concentrated, the skewness in ownership of assets has resulted in lesser productivity and growth rate. The land reforms are only a part of the solution, the government should formulate policies to provide leverage to the new generation in terms of finances and training, he added.

To further increase growth, Dr. Akmal said, the industry has to shift from low-value added to high-value added sectors. He pointed out that the low value added sectors earn less income and consequently, the workers are paid less wages. The low skill of the labour force is another important factor which hampers economic growth.

Stressing on the importance of South Asian Peace, he pointed out that India was the 142nd country in terms of per capita income and was the largest importer of weapons, whereas, Pakistan ranked 119th in per capita income, was 10th in terms of importing defense equipment. He said the expenditure on defense is decreasing all over the world but in case of India and Pakistan, the expenditure is increasing @ per cent a year. Criticising the priorities of the successive governments he said that the magnitude of sacrifice by the masses appeared to be quite immense. He substantiated the argument by quoting statistics which showed that by saving one year of military expenditure, 238 million children can be provided primary education, 400 million people can be provided access to clean water and 234 millions can be provided with essential medicines.

Dr Arshad Waheed, expert in social policy & planning, talked at length about the role of Non Governmental Organisations in social change. While challenging the role of NGOs as the agencies of social change and the sole representative of civil society, he said the claims of the NGOs are unrealistic while analysed objectively. He said it was still questionable as to who determines the agenda on which the NGOs operate. He said most of the proposals are written in the required jargon to meet the desires of the donors rather than focussing on real issues confronting the society.

He said that the activities of the NGOs are mostly adhoc and randomly issue focussed. He also criticised the NGOs for not giving serious considerations to tap local resources and enhance voluntarism. Mentioning a few ignored areas he said that the NGOs had never touched the issues of structural violence in class contradictions, poverty and growth. He mentioned that where the NGOs have posed resistance against an oppressive and all powerful state, they did not chalk out any plan to fight out the cruel monopoly of market economy. He strongly recommended to bridge the gap between the NGOs and the political parties if they were really looking for a social change.

Madhavi Aribandhu, co-ordinator South Asian Network of Disaster Mitigation and an expert serving in Intermediate Technology Development Group in Sri Lanka, stressed that the development models provided by the west were not appropriate for the South. 

She said that the South has been facing problems that are much different in nature and magnitude from those experienced in the West. While the western models aimed at the development of the urban cities only, the development challenges in the South can be countered only by using appropriate technology, she viewed. She said the appropriate technology can be determined through skill levels of the people, infra-structure and dynamics of economy and usage of indigenous resources would greatly help in reaching the goal of development.

Summitra, speaking on the dynamics of alternative culture said that we must realise the fact that we live in a multi-cultured society. She questioned the cultural totems on which people act rigidly to defy others.
On the second day of the dialogue the first session on media and state relations former Chairman Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Mr I A Rehman, said that today’s state is more vulnerable than that of 1947. The state at that time had a consensus and the problems facing it were evident, but presently, neither the state has a consensus nor its problems can be termed as objective ones, he said.

Mr Rehman was of the view that where the media strengthens a democratic state, a free media can only be ensured by a stable state. He said our state has always remained vulnerable since independence. The state systems have been inherited from a colonial administration which never support freedom of press as in fact it was a reflection of people’s desire for freedom.

Elaborating on the history of mass media he said the preliminary forms of media were either the government gazettes which described the achievements of the government or only a few independent presses established by freedom aspirants. Since the inception of mass media, he said, each and every  government tried to harness the press the phenomenon of governmental oppression on the freedom of press is not new as newspapers came under fire a few weeks after independence, he added. 

Mr Rehman was of the opinion that a democratic debate is not considered in favour of the state and the role of the press media was considered more like an adversary of the government. He said that there are innumerable precedents in which rulers brought out their own papers and news agencies, bought out the exiting newspapers or sealed them down. During the martial law regimes many papers were banned in East

He said late dictator General Ziaul Haq created differences among journalist organisations who were opposing his dictatorial regime and awarded his own men. He said that there are no more parallel organisations to cause problems, the differences are created from among the organisation.

He said the worsening of the state-media relations would be evident when we compare the number of strikes called by journalists from 1963 to 1976 and those called afterwards. Calling the present situation as a ridiculous one, he said the government changes but the working manual remains the same. 

Mentioning the 1963’s Press and Publications Ordinance, he said that the only change was the replacement of PPO with Registration of Press and Publications Ordinance in 1988 in which declaration was granted impromptu three months after submitting declaration before the DC office. He said the purpose of declaration, even in the colonial administration, was not a license, but only to inform the administration about the address and name of the publication. 

Talking about the Freedom Information Act, he said the freedom of expression includes all sorts of freedom for citizens. In the presence of freedom of expression there is no need to talk separately about the information Acts or press freedom. He quoted the example of Indian Constitution in which there is no separate clause about the freedom of press. He said that to recompense the early injustice with the press the 1973 constitution clearly laid down the freedom of expression and freedom of press separately. 

He said the Press Council suggested by the government has seven members out of which none is a professional journalist. He said this attitude of the government only reflects contempt towards public opinion. He said press freedom is not an absolute end, it is a mean instead for a better democratic culture. He said if we compare the present times with that of 1947, the facts reveal that we had less resources in 1947 but we are poorer now due to misallocation of resources. He said the journalists should struggle after mustering support from the people to ensure their freedom. He said it should also be looked into whether the freedom of press has caused more damage to the country or absence of such freedom.

Responding to questions about the non-payment of salaries, government regulations, code of ethics, he said that these issues are prevailing due to the weaknesses of the journalist community.

Mr Khawar Mehdi, a journalist from Islamabad, argued that the state did not damage the press as much as did the press persons. He quoted the examples of journalists who had joined hands with state and despite the damage they have caused to the press freedom movement, they are still recognised as journalists.
Many other journalists participating in the dialogue questioned the active participation of journalists when big shots of journalism enter into a conflict with the government, while the journalists working in regional papers find no support from journalists serving the mainstream national media.

President Press Club, Mr Saqlain Imam said that the danger to the state is not from press freedom but from the corrupt classes and multi-national companies. He said that press freedom could not be isolated from the other civil liberties. Referring to the colonial administration system he said that as many as 30 colonial acts were still prevailing even after fifty years of independence. Commenting on the financial status of an ordinary journalist he said that only 15 per cent journalists are getting their salaries in accordance with the wage award while others get less or no salary at all.

Professor Mehdi Hasan, an academician and expert on mass communications, delivered a flamboyant comment on the social role of media. He said creating awareness about the rights of the people has never been considered favourable by any government. 

Discussing the professional ethics he mentioned one of his researches in which it was found out that 97.6 per cent of the news published in mainstream newspapers are based on statements. Referring to the professional ethics he had experienced in the profession, he said the columns published in newspapers are not for people’s education, rather, they seem to aim at self-projection of the columnist. 

Commenting on decline in professional standards he said that it was the responsibility of the journalist unions to build the professional capacity of the journalists and if the journalists are less skilled, state and newspapers owners could not be blamed for that. Mentioning the role of state-owned electronic media, he said that according to another research it was discovered that the news on television mentioned the name and the designation of the Prime Minister as many as 53 times per day on average. 

On the issue of social responsibility of press he maintained that the social responsibility of the press was to be determined by the press itself. Quoting a few examples he added that Britain has complete freedom of press and there is no censor board in America even for the commercial movies. Substantiating his argument he referred to the incident when some private photographs of Sarah Ferguson were published in Daily Sun and the paper proudly wrote that these photographs cost them five years and 1.5 million pounds. Times London while commenting on it in one of its editorial maintained that they would not have published those photographs even if they had found them free of cost. Professor Mehdi Hasan said that there is a universal code of ethics which every journalist has to follow. The matter which should not be published includes photographs of mutilated dead bodies, rape details and private beliefs, he added. 

Professor Mehdi Hasan was of the view that the journalists needed proper training to develop their skills so that the newspaper owners might treat them as a true professionals and paid them more salaries. He said the people sitting in Islamabad could not solve problems facing the people in Karachi or any other part of the country. Invoking Quaid-e-Azam he added that the founder of Pakistan never labelled his political opponents as traitors. While successive governments have been abusing the terms of ‘national interests’. 

Aziz Mazhar, Editor Reporting Pakistan, speaking on neglected issues in media, said that one should not confuse media-government relations with media-state relations. He pointed out some of the areas to which the journalists were completely oblivious. These included issues of the rural areas, women, child rights, health and the problems in neglected regions of

The first session of the third day was addressed by Editor Foreign Desk Jang Mr Azad Kausary on the issue of cultural conflicts. While reading out his paper on the roots of cultural conflict in South Asia, he said that religious, class, ethnic and national identities of the south Asian region all should be recognized. When someone tries to counterpoise one against the other , it will create conflicts both cultural and political, he added.

The second session of the third day saw some thought provoking presentations from Amjad Bhatti, a journalist from Islamabad and renowned economist, Omar Asghar Khan.

Amjad Bhatti in the start of the second session gave his presentation on forms of violence and peace, said that peace cannot be seen in isolation with the economic situation in Citing examples of violence in Karachi and Jhang, he said that they rose out of economic deprivation rather than ethnic and sectarian issues. He refuted the idea that identity issue is causes of conflict rather it is in the interpretation. He said there were precedents when different identities co-existed peacefully but violence started when any of the groups fears seclusion from the rest of the society. 

Speaking on the development models, he said that quite paradoxically, development strategies designed by the Harvard Group in the sixties increased economic disparity and paved way for further violence in He emphasized that peace should not be dealt with ethics-orientation, it should be viewed with a structural orientation instead. Social polarization of groups, a centralized political system and misleading economic indicators to evaluate development, he said, also caused a lot of problems to the peace of the region. He said that times and again it has been proven that intervention of the state necessarily aggravated conflicts instead of resolving them. He suggested a third track diplomacy between Pakistan and India to ensure participation of the people in creating peace in the region and that the peace should be viewed from a local perspective, he added.

Omar Asghar Khan while presenting his paper on Peace mobilization and people’s response, he said Pakistan has to allocate more than 7 or 8 per cent of the GNP to create a military balance. When we compare these figures with that of the social development, we find that only 0.6 per cent of the GNP is spent on social development, he added. 

Commenting on the increasing violence he said the recent suicide incidents were the reflection of misery faced by people. He said, instead of taking any concrete measures for the solution of the problems, the government stopped the press from commenting on the situation. The government tends to mistrust the components of society may it be press or non-governmental organization.

He said that until we integrate our peace movement with the issues of social justice and concentration of wealth, it will not deliver in the Pakistani society. Nevertheless, our political culture is becoming more and more militant and intolerant. We have peace alternatives to bring Pakistan out of crises but this state is shaping itself into a national security state, rather than human security state. He cited that no parliamentary member was ready to oppose this ‘Yum-e-Takbeer’ publicly when invited by him because they feared retaliation by the state agencies. He questioned the celebrations as a promotion of violent values. He said despite claims of democracy there is no tolerance on difference of opinion and alternatives and new ideas are considered to be treacherous by the state. He said that India pushed us to test the nuclear bombs and we were trapped to do a blunder. Every day 2000 children die in Pakistan, he added. He said militant Mafias are threatening the peace of our society, while the weak governments of South Asia are trying to divert people’s attention from real issues of this region.

Beena Sarwar, editor news on Sunday, seconded Omar Asghar saying that these celebrations were merely for the political interests. She said that the government has also directed newspapers not to report against celebrations. She urged the sections of society to join hands for a social movement.

Khawar Mehdi, a journalist from Islamabad told the participants of his research that 5 million guerrilla youth from 24 fundamentalist groups, present especially in Punjab and the NWFP, are threatening to disrupt the fibre of Pakistani society. These organizations are also giving employment to these young people. These groups collect 75 percent of their money from indigenous resources.

In the concluding session of the dialogue Chairman JRC Rashid Rehman proposed that civil society should form a resistance coalition to counter the state oppression. He also said that state oppression was on the rise and social institutions were being forced to submit to the will of the state. He stressed on the need of holding more dialogues on the similar pattern to discuss issues of national importance. 

A publication by Journalists Resource Centre Media-Government Relations, a collection of essays on Jang-government row 1999, was distributed among the participants of the dialogue at the end of the session. The event was funded completely by local means which, indeed, is a great precedent for the others to follow. 

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