Crisis information and management
The recent atta crisis hit Pakistan out of the blue. It was not enough that wheat in considerable volume had gone to the flour mills, on leaving the premises the milled wheat followed the “market economy” philosophy and went to where it was fetching a better price, across the border in food-starved Afghanistan and beyond to Central Asia as well as to the arid areas of Rajasthan in India. Somebody made a killing, not only in supplying flour to the needy ex-Pakistan but when the crisis hit Pakistan at exorbitant prices within the country.
Focussed primarily on the economy, which the Benazir regime left in a continuing crisis of unimaginable proportions, the government lost sight of the fact that the country runs on its stomach, mainly on bread. The most famous example is that of Marie Antoinette suggesting plaintively, “If the people do not have bread, why don’t they eat cake?” The people took her head instead! For the first time in Pakistan. After the sugar crisis in the late 60s, we had food riots in a number of cities in the country. These were spontaneous not engineered. There was also no doubt that political activists of different ilk took advantage of the situation later and added fuel to the mass ire.
The typical knee-jerk reaction of the ruling party was that it was due to the wrong policies of the previous regime because excess permits for lifting flour had been given to their favourites. This was true to an extent as well as the fact that the caretakers erred in asking for April shipments of the wheat purchased from abroad. However, the 90 days between the Nawaz Sharif government and the Benazir regime, the caretaker government, was a buffer period. The atta crisis peaked a full 45 days after Mian Nawaz Sharif was sworn in as PM. As far back as Jan 11, 1997, there were stray reports of some shortages. Responsibility must be shouldered by the present Federal Government, in particular the lifting of ban on the movement of wheat inter-province on March 11, 1997, which allowed hoarders and smugglers full licence to move stocks across the porous borders to more “lucrative” havens. The crisis came about because of lack of adequate information that could have led to action designed to prevent such situations from going out of control. Information may be of varied nature but anything out of the ordinary that can have repercussions on the social, economic and political balance of the community needs to be known in a hurry so that measures can be taken for tackling the problem before it becomes a crisis. Sources of information are always available in any administrative set-up but the means of collecting and collating that information in Pakistan as well as transmitting it with speed in methodical fashion is outdated. An “early warning” system has to be evolved that automatically takes cognisance of a potential problem and ensures that necessary details reach the primary Federal and provincial set-ups by the fastest means available.
There may be some problem about jurisdiction i.e., the provincial set-up may not want to involve the Federal Government in many issues out of the jealous prerogative of their autonomy, that is their privilege. The Federation already has its own independent intelligence gathering sources in the provinces. These must be geared up to providing traditional and non-traditional intelligence in a hurry. Furthermore, alternate “early warning” systems must be developed. The ruling political party must be sensitive to information sent by their own political infrastructure.
Unfortunately the prime reporting agencies only confine themselves to ferreting out “subversive” activities. This is a farce when most such material is motivated out of individual jealousy or vested interest designed to serve personal motives rather than any national cause. Making a mountain out of a molehill does not adequately describe such intelligence gathering making mountains where no molehill exists is a much more appropriate description. Governments must not always react to a situation their “Standard Operating Procedure” (SOP) must take command of a situation even as it develops.
The problem arises where all this information will flow to? If there is a law and order problem, e.g. on an ethnic or religious basis, it will go to the Interior Ministry through the Intelligence Bureau or the provincial Special Branches of Police. Does the Interior Ministry have a fully-equipped Central Control Room (CCR) manned 24 hours by an experienced officer who can assess the magnitude of the problem and take steps for its rectification on his own authority, or if he feels it exceeds his authority.
To bring appropriate notice for action of the authorised person? In theory probably yes, in practice probably no. Whereas the Interior Ministry can be expected to have such a CCR (as probably would the Defence Ministry and the three Services), do the Food and Agriculture Ministry, the Communications Ministry, the Health Ministry, etc., have such an institutional information and management early warning system operating around the clock? Or would the CCR concept need to be duplicated in the presence of a Main CCR?
Let us take the route of the atta shortage. When the ban on inter-province movement of wheat was lifted, the border areas must have seen an increased inflow of wheat and the market shelves a decreasing quantity of atta. This should have been reported through various channels by various agencies. Similarly when atta started to disappear totally from shelves through the country, this should have set off alarm bells in concerned quarters in the provincial governments as well as the Federal Government instead of the functionaries being made aware of the crisis through newspaper reports, which further exacerbated the crisis into unmanageable proportions as people rushed to clean out the existing stocks. Why was not our publicity machine geared to stem the panic? Why was not a full-fledged “damage control” operation launched to counter the adverse propaganda? One does not doubt that reports and half-hearted efforts of various kinds on the media were made. Where was the massive coordinated response till the Food and Agriculture Minister, Ms Abida Hussain, herself took charge of operations, and even in her case, why so late? One would expect that given the many problems of different nature facing Pakistan, both man-made and natural, e.g. (in this government’s short tenure alone) the Shantinagar incident (Muslim-Christian riots), the Multan incident (Shia-Sunni riots), the major railway accident at Khanewal, the earthquake in Balochistan, etc, there needs to be at least one 24 hours Crisis Information and Management Centre (CIMC) each at the Federal and provincial level positively, at the Divisional/District level certainly, and at the Police Station level preferably. All the CIMCs should be equipped with adequate maps, computers, faxes, High Frequency (HF) links and banks of telephones, the number of equipment decreasing in descending order of level. Between the Federal and Provincial CIMCs there should be at least two hot lines, one on voice and one on fax/E-mail, and definitely an HF link. With the recent advancement of computer technology, electronic mode (E-mail) can be used to send messages or typed out directly as required. Once information is available about any abnormal activity, an SOP must act as a guideline to the senior personnel in the CIMC for further action. On a cautionary note, all the information must be checked, verified and cross-checked so that alarm bells are not set off that in turn result in panic due to an initial hasty reaction based on disinformation and/or misinformation. This is always a major risk to guard against since some individuals and/or groups specialise in spreading politically motivated rumours. Once information has been received and verified in the quickest possible time, the concerned official in CIMC must decide whether the magnitude of the problem warrants that the concerned official in the appropriate Ministry or Department should be alerted or if the management of the problem is well within the capability of the CIMC to cope with, at least during non-office hours. It may even be necessary, depending upon the magnitude of the problem, whether “early warning”, even without verification, should be passed onto the concerned person with the caveat that the facts were in the meantime being cross-checked for authenticity. This would give reaction time for any of the concerned parties. For cyclone warning pre-1971, there was in place an “early” warning system of danger signals. Similarly for both man-made and/or natural disaster, timely warning will lead to better management of the crisis.
The three year period leading upto the elections (and even after the elections till he assumed power) was a period of experience for Mian Nawaz Sharif gained at the expense of the PPP regime. He saw at first hand the bankruptcy of not making the best use of expertise and talent from all over the country, the rulers opting instead for an inefficient, nepotism-ridden “crony” system. In Mian Sahib’s second tenure he owes it to his many supporters to show more inclination to shake himself loose from those who do not take kindly to professional management or expertise from outside the confines of the “inner circle” in any position of influence. Courtiers always tend to be totally subservient and act as cheer leaders for all the actions of the rulers good or bad. In the image of the predecessor.
Zardari’s government-in-all-but-name, they in fact become a sort of an all-pervasive “kitchen” cabinet without the responsibility for the authority they can manage to influence.
On the other hand, a crisis information and management system is completely geared to professional management and reaction thereof. In today’s advanced technology world, no entity of any size, whether it be a country or of corporate nature, can do without a 24 hours information and management thereof to give early warning of a potential crisis and if a crisis does occur, to contain it without allowing anarchy to rule the streets as happened recently.
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