E-Paper
Neighbourhood watch
You don?t really need an index to know that some States are failing. Yet, the Failed States Index that has been put out by The Fund for Peace is a useful exercise that provides a measure of mathematical precision to what could otherwise be mere prejudice and paranoia.
You don’t really need an index to know that some States are failing. Yet, the Failed States Index that has been put out by The Fund for Peace is a useful exercise that provides a measure of mathematical precision to what could otherwise be mere prejudice and paranoia. The index has a list of 12 social, economic and political indicators — ranging from measures of demographic pressures, uneven economic development, factious elites, criminalisation of the polity and so on. The totals are aggregated and this year’s list places Sudan as the ‘most failed’ State and Norway at 146 as the ‘least failed’. In 2005, among the 76 countries indexed, India stood at No. 76, the least failed, one spot below China at 75. This year, India has improved its ranking and slid to 93 while China has moved up to No 57.
But spare a thought for the neighbourhood. Five of our neighbours are in the first 20, and the most alarming part of the list. Nepal is at 20, Bangladesh 19, Myanmar 18, Afghanistan 10 and Pakistan 9. Pakistan has actually tumbled from 34 in 2005. This is primarily because of the devastating consequences of the earthquake that killed nearly 100,000 persons and displaced millions, as well as the strife in Balochistan and Waziristan, but other sub-indicators, too, took a jump such as its human rights record, especially in relation to women.
An interesting sidelight is the analysis of Pakistan’s core State institutions that reveals that they are moderately good in terms of its leadership, police, judiciary and civil service. The fifth institution, the army, is good, “well trained and under the control of the State”, which is, of course, headed by its Chief of Staff, Pervez Musharraf. The one problem element is the ISI which the analysis says operates with “near complete impunity”. There is an obvious conclusion that stares us in the face: it’s not such a bad idea to do business with the general.
