South Asia Citizens Web

The recent microfinance ordinance in Andhra Pradesh, India has unleashed a vibrant debate on the rapidly expanding role of this source of credit.

At the end of his recent visit, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, along with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh issued a joint statement reaffirming their "shared endeavour to strengthen democracy, transparency and accountability". However, apart from promoting these "shared values", Sarkozy was looking to win business deals for France. The biggest such deal involved nuclear reactors for Jaitapur, a town on the Konkan coast at Ratnagiri in Maharashtra. If this deal goes through, Jaitapur could become the site of the world’s largest nuclear complex.

The Cancun Agreements are bad for the world, unfair to the South’s vulnerable people, and soft on the North. Of the promised $30 billion “fast track” finance by 2012, the North has so far mobilised only $4.5 billion. A good chunk of Northern assistance will come from the private sector and take the form of loans or equity. Some of it won’t be “new and additional funding,” but will be taken out of existing aid flows.

Pakistani society owes much to numerous progressive left-wing individuals, as well as small groups. They unionized industrial and railway workers, helped peasants organize against powerful landlords, inspired Pakistan’s minority provinces to demand their rights, set standards of writing and journalism, and raised voices for peace and against militarism. Often this was at enormous personal cost. Leaders and workers belonging to worker and student groups have been targeted, victimized, beaten, and sometimes killed.

But the truth must be the told – secular, liberal, and left groupings has never had a national presence in Pakistan and, even at their peak during the 1970’s, could not muster even a fraction of the street power of the Islamic or mainstream parties.