Headlines:
- Karachi Deprived of Water Due to Democracy
- Without Khilafah, Energy Crisis and High Tariffs will Cripple Pakistan
- Musharraf Cases Confirm Need for Khilafah
Karachi Deprived of Water Due to Democracy
As reported in Dawn dated 15 December 2016, a two-day workshop was organized by the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) in collaboration with the World Bank-Pakistan. It revealed that Karachi at present provided a sewerage system to only 40% of its population and also 50% suffered water shortage. Mr Jaafar Friaa, the WB Pakistan program leader, said, the yearly expenditure of KWSB is $106million, with $66m in electricity bills only, while it earns a $60m revenue. KWSB was described as a “de-facto bankrupt utility” that is facing a real crisis on account of increased political interference, over-staffing, lack of accountability and transparency.
Karachi with a population of over twenty million people is considered to be the world’s third largest city and it is largest city of Pakistan. Karachi has one-third of all of Pakistan’s industry with a vibrant and diverse economic profile. Despite all the resources and potential, the people living in Karachi are made to face severe water and sewerage disposal shortage. Today, not many areas of Karachi are supplied with water around the clock. In fact much of Karachi, especially newly developed areas like Gulistan-e-Jauhar, have water supplied for a couple of hours on an alternate-day basis. So, residents have to store water in water-tanks for their needs. This is the state of developed areas. As for undeveloped areas, they face even worse conditions. How they get water has never been a main concern of the authorities. Many areas are forced to pay to private owners of water depots, for either illegal connections or daily supply by mobile water-tankers. Several reports earlier have revealed that many of these private water depot owners are actually stealing from the KWSB pipelines, which worsens the supply-demand equation. Interestingly many water depot owners are owned by individuals who are either from political parties or enjoy political patronage. The sewerage pipelines spread underground are decades old and the shell-life of many of them has expired, which causes many of them to burst frequently, submerging streets in filthy, infection-causing sewerage water.
Like many other potentially valuable assets of Pakistan, KWSB is being run into the ground, crippled by corruption. The KWSB managing director Misbahuddin Farid himself stated that privatization is on the cards, explaining that the World Bank desires that “we make positive changes at the KWSB. The foremost is the restructuring of the KWSB board, making it an effective autonomous body comprising professionals and other relevant stakeholders.” Thus like electricity and gas, water is being targeted for privatization which will mean greater burdens on the common man as the new private owners will be in a commanding position to raise prices to guarantee profits as well as covering their original investment in a short time.
The cure to Karachi’s water shortage does not lie in privatization, foreign investment or more colonialist loans for they are the disease itself. The only cure is the implementation of Islam’s economic system, which alone would generate more than enough revenue to revolutionize the economy. Unlike Capitalism and Communism, Islam has declared that water is neither a private nor a state property but a public property for all the Muslims. RasulAllah (saw) said, «المسلمون شرکاء فی ثلاث الماء والکلاء والنار» “Muslims are partners in three things: water, pastures and fire (energy)” [Abu Dawood.]. Thus, although the Khilafah state takes charge of managing the public property and state property, it is not permitted for the Khalifah to grant the ownership of the public property to any private party, whether an individual or group, as it is a property for all Muslims. Revenues are for the public, looking after its affairs and securing its interests, and not for the state. This applies to all the abundant wealth of public property, whether energy, such as petroleum, gas, electricity or replenishable minerals, such as copper and steel, or water, such as seas, rivers and dams, or pastures and forests. Indeed, the entire Ummah is known to possess the lion’s share of the world’s energy and mineral resources, but without Islam’s economic system, the Muslims are drowned in poverty and the Ummah carries no weight in world affairs, even when compared to states that possess a small fraction of her material wealth.
Without Khilafah, Energy Crisis and High Tariffs will Cripple Pakistan
As reported in Dawn dated 15 December 2016, a study by WB states that even after the recent reforms, the group receiving the greatest share of electricity subsidy expenditure remains the wealthiest 20 per cent of the population. The average subsidy for the wealthiest 20% of households is 40% higher than that for the poorest 20%. Based on qualitative research, the study finds that in spite of the subsidies, low- and lower-middle income households in the country struggle to afford their basic electricity needs. Some households reported being forced to reduce expenditure on food, health and childcare in order to afford electricity bills. Aside from affordability, residential electricity users are most concerned about the reliability of supply and quality of customer service. Electricity is central to the lives of modern households and their lives are disrupted not only by long hours of load shedding common in recent years but also by unaffordable tariffs. Under the dictations of the international colonialists financial institutions Pakistan’s successive puppet regimes have already privatised KESC and privatization of other power distribution companies is on the cards. Increasing tariffs and expensive energy from IPP (Independent Power Producers) have all added up to the energy crisis which is crippling ordinary Muslims.
Through democracy’s implementation of capitalism, the government is responsible for Pakistan’s electricity crisis. The present capitalist system ensures that through privatization a few private owners, foreign and local, fully benefit from electricity resources whilst the public faces hardship. Privatization raises electricity prices so that the private owners can profit in their business. As an example the World Bank has closely overseen rises in electricity charges, which surged between 2000 and 2004 and continue to rise such that people are paying as much for electricity in the winter as they used to in the peak of summer before massive privatization took hold. So, whilst private owners amass huge wealth by owning electricity resources, the rest of society is stricken by increasingly un-affordable energy prices. In addition, regarding the electricity shortages, the government itself fell into debt to these private interests to the order of billions of Rupees. Then the private interests reduced production of electricity because they were not paid what they were due and were not able to maintain profits.
Islam will end the capitalist economy and establish an Islamic one. As a system Islam ensures the distribution of wealth and one of its mechanisms is the public ownership of electricity resources as well as coal, oil and gas. As such these resources are neither owned by the state nor individuals. Instead, the state administers this resource to ensure that its benefit is used for all the citizens, regardless of race, color, school of thought and religion. The Khilafah will abolish taxes upon power and fuel which have further greatly inflated their prices. It will charge only to cover their production and distribution costs, if needed, and any profit from sales to non-hostile non-Muslim states will be put to use for taking care of the public’s needs. Islam’s electricity policy will contribute to a massive industrialization of Pakistan, supervised by the Khilafah.
In its Introduction to the Constitution, Hizb ut Tahrir has adopted in Article 137, “There are three categories of Public Ownership: a. Public utilities, such as the open spaces in the towns. b. Vast mineral resources, like oil fields. c. Things which, by their nature, preclude ownership by individuals, such as rivers.” In Article 138, it has adopted, “Factories by their nature are private property. However, they follow the rule of the product that they are producing. If the product is private property then the factory is considered to be private property, such as textile factories. If the product is public property then the factory is considered public property, such as factories for iron ore production.” In Article 139, it has adopted, “The State is not permitted to transfer private property into public property, since public property is confirmed by the nature and characteristic of wealth and not by the opinion of the State.” And in Article 140, it has adopted, “Every individual from the Ummah has the right to utilise anything from public property, and it is not allowed for the State to permit someone to individually possess or utilise it.”
Musharraf Cases Confirm Need for Khilafah
The controversy over cases against the former President General Musharraf, who resigned in August 2008 amidst great opposition, has intensified in the media and political medium again, with the Baluchistan High Court threatening to issue a red warrant for his arrest if he there is a no-show at his next hearing. The heart of the matter is not the civilian government’s alleged pressure on the judiciary regarding cases against Musharraf. Nor is the heart of the matter the former military chief’s alleged removal of pressure on the judiciary, which allowed Musharraf to leave Pakistan in March 2016. The heart of the matter is the absence of a judiciary that judges by Islam to remove the ruler in the midst of his corruption, not after the fact. Had Islam been implemented in Pakistan, the case of Musharraf would have been settled right at the beginning of his nine year rule and would not still be debated almost a full nine years after it has ended.
Unlike democracy, in Islam, rulers are never immune from prosecution and are subject to immediate removal by the judiciary, if they implement other than Islam. Obedience to the ruler is dependent on their implementing all that Allah سبحانه وتعالى has revealed. Thus, in the Khilafah, any ruler is bought immediately to task by the judiciary, specifically the Court of Unjust Acts, even if that ruler were the Khaleefah himself. It was reported by Ibn Hibban that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said,«سَيَكُونُ مِنْ بَعْدِي خُلَفَاءُ، يَعْمَلُونَ بِمَا يَعْلَمُونَ، وَيَفْعَلُونَ مَا يُؤْمَرُونَ، وَسَيَكُونُ مِنْ بَعْدِهِمْ خُلَفَاءُ، يَعْمَلُونَ مَا لاَ يَعْلَمُونَ، وَيَفْعَلُونَ مَا لاَ يُؤْمَرُونَ، فَمَنْ أَنْكَرَ بَرِئَ، وَمَنْ أَمْسَكَ سَلِمَ، وَلَكِنْ مَنْ رَضِيَ وَتَابَع» “There will be after me Khulafaa who act according to what they know (from Islam) and do what they were ordered and there will be after them Khulafaa who will act according to what they do not know and do what they were not ordered (with), so whoever rejects them is innocent from them, and whoever holds themselves (from following them) is safe, but the one who is pleased with them and follows them (is blameworthy).”
It is the absence of Islam that has reduced the serious matter of rulers violating the rights of Muslims and Islam to a media sensation and a political bargaining chip. Worse, the current rulers persecute those who account them according to Islam, harassing them, seizing them and torturing them, which is clearly seen in the case of Hizb ut Tahrir. This is even though accounting the ruler is a great duty in Islam for RasulAllah ﷺ said,«سَيِّدُ الشُّهَدَاءِ حَمْزَةُ بْنُ عَبْدِ الْمُطَّلِبِ وَرَجُلٌ قَامَ إِلَى إِمَامٍ جَائِرٍ فَأَمَرَهُ وَنَهَاهُ فَقَتَلَهُ» “The master of martyrs is Hamza Ibn Abu Mutallab and any man who stood up to an oppressive ruler accounting him and was killed because of that” (Hakim). It is enough that Pakistan has been stricken by decades of corrupt rulers. It is enough that the rights of Muslim and the Islamic injunctions are trampled underfoot without any consequence. It is enough that the ruler of the time is applauded by “court politicians” and then cursed when he has long left ruling. It is time that the Muslims embraced fully the Khilafah project upon the method of the Prophethood and propel it to its conclusion. Only then will the Muslims will have rulers that implement that which they hold more precious than their lives, Islam.