India’s rather belligerent media, especially when it comes to matters concerning Pakistan, clearly sank to a new low just the other day when it made claims of civil war breaking out in Karachi and martial law being imposed in parts of Sindh. They were no doubt trying to take advantage of the situation that developed after the strange circumstances in which opposition leader Captain (retired) Safdar of PML-N was arrested from his hotel room in the middle of the night following Pakistan Democratic Movement’s (PDM’s) strong public rally in the pot city. The Pakistani foreign office was quick to take notice of and rebut all such claims. A formal complaint has also been forwarded to the management of social media platform Twitter for its complicity in airing what is clearly fake news.
Such acts betray sheer desperation on the part of their perpetrators because they show that they have nothing better to offer. And it is no secret that the level of hatred for Pakistan that this particular Indian administration harbours is unparalleled even by the somewhat low standards of New Delhi. It seems they have been stung once too often by Islamabad’s front-foot policy of exposing Indian atrocities in Kashmir, and its refusal to engage in bilateral talks, at important international forums including the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council. And with nothing intrinsic to show for their position they have now resorted to fantasy because they need to keep coming up with one thing or the other to keep their extremist, anti-Muslim and very anti-Pakistan support base happy.
Such are the pitfalls of imposing a xenophobic party ideology on a pluralistic democracy. India, for all its faults, has long stood out as one of the few countries in the world that truly accepted, not just tolerated, all sorts of representations among its population and indeed raised many people from minority religious groupings to some of the highest offices in the land. Such openness went a long way in hiding some of its unfair policies towards Muslims and some Christians and the world was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt as long as it managed to appear at least politically correct. But those times are already long gone. As was evident after the last general election in India, a large majority of the people there choose to vote on the basis of religious sentiments rather than political and economic considerations. This tendency has now pushed the whole country right to the edge. Right now, BJP’s desperation is making all of India look bad.
Home loans for the poor
It’s good of heads of the country’s top banks to heap praise on the prime minister for taking care of their interests during the worst of the lockdown recently and also for all the things he’s doing to provide low-cost housing to poor people. The government did indeed go out of its way to keep the financial sector solvent even in the darkest of times and the state bank lent a very helpful hand. And it goes to the PM’s credit that he promised to provide low-cost housing to poor people. The biggest problem that kept the project from taking off all this time was the somewhat shocking absence of foreclosure laws in the country. Once they found a way past that problem they got to know that, while the central bank was happy to order commercial banks to forward housing loans to poor people, the latter weren’t too willing to go ahead unless there was a sovereign guarantee against defaults, which apparently never came.
That delayed progress even further but once the government is able to sort this mess as well it will soon confront one more hurdle. Fine-tuning the banking system is all very good and was needed for a long time no doubt, but this particular program is meant to provide housing to the poorer among the lot. And that category unfortunately does not have the luxury of bank accounts. What to do then of the unbanked among us, whom the program was meant to cater to in the first place?
Banks perform some of the most critical functions of the market but initiatives like the Naya Pakistan Housing Program have to be enabled by the government. And considering the fiscal position of the government at the moment it seems the best they can do is try different forms of partnerships with the private sector and at least get the ball rolling. The scheme would enable a far larger part of the middle and lower working classes to build homes for themselves than before but further down the food chain, the people that the prime minister originally meant to give affordable homes will unfortunately have to remain without such things for a while longer. Perhaps such bottlenecks can enable push the government to figure out innovative ways of reaching the least fortunate among us in a way that they can be slowly empowered enough to be able to build their own homes.
