Cameron's multi-million gamble to win Pakistani minds

Prime minister reveals willingness to work with spy agencies but urges Pakistan to 'make its wealthy pay more tax'

David Cameron has taken a calculated and expensive diplomatic gamble by agreeing to put his faith in the Pakistani security services to help Britain leave Afghanistan, in the hope of preventing the export of terrorism to Britain.

Nearly half of the terrorist plots against Britain come from Pakistan's lawless north-west frontiers.

On a visit to Islamabad, Cameron promised £650m in aid to fund 4 million school places, 90,000 teachers, and refurbishment of 8,000 schools, arguing that education is the best antidote to terror. Pakistan is now the largest beneficiary of UK aid.

Cameron said he could justify the move domestically only if the Pakistani elite paid more taxes. He said bluntly, in a speech, that Pakistan suffered from "weaknesses in terms of government capacity and waste".

But he revealed a new willingness to work with Pakistani intelligence agencies to secure a political settlement in Afghanistan before Britain leaves in 2015.

A year ago, Cameron put UK-Pakistan relations in deep-freeze by criticising the Pakistanis for facing both ways in the fight against terror.

On Tuesday he talked of a fresh start and a new era of co-operation.

British officials say they are now convinced that the growing internal Islamist terrorist threat inside the country has caused the intelligence service, the ISI, to take a tougher role in combating the Taliban and al-Qaida inside Pakistan. British officials said the Pakistani prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, and the president, Asif Ali Zardari, recognised they were involved in "an existential battle" with terrorists.

During his one-day visit, Cameron offered the president unprecedented intelligence co-operation and agreed to set up a joint "centre of excellence" in Pakistan to exchange knowledge on improvised explosive devices.

He also sought to reassure his hosts that he does not see India as Britain's preferred partner in the region. He set a goal of Anglo-Pakistani trade rising from £1.9 bn to £2.5bn by 2015.

In a sign of the importance of the trip to UK national security, Cameron was accompanied by Sir Peter Ricketts, the national security adviser, Sir David Richards, the chief of the defence staff, and Sir John Sawers, head of MI6. The three were in Islamabad only a month ago to prepare the ground for what is being billed as an "enhanced security dialogue". The aim was to build a less transactional relationship, officials said, and to work on the basis of broader, long-term trust.

At a joint press conference, Gilani said: "I want to assure you that Pakistan has the resolve and the commitment to fight against extremism and terrorism. We've paid a heavy price for that."

He pointed out that 30,000 civilians had been killed and a similar number disabled.

He said: "The political leadership has been targeted. The bombs have gone off in girls' schools, hospitals, the malls, the police stations and even in the intelligence service headquarters."

Cameron praised his hosts: "What you see in Pakistan is a huge fight by the government taking place against terrorism."

He defended the size of the projected aid package, saying he would "struggle to find an example of a country" whose progress and success were more in Britain's national interest than were those of Pakistan.

But, unusually, he challenged Pakistan by pointing out that it currently spends only 1.5% of national income on education, and has one of the lowest tax revenues, relative to GDP, of any country in the world.

"You are not raising the resources necessary to pay for things that a modern state and people require," he said. "Too few people pay tax. Too many of your richest people are getting away without paying much tax at all. And that's not fair." British officials indicated that they had asked the Pakistan military as diplomatically as possible when it planned to enter North Waziristan, the tribal heartland and sanctuary from which many terrorist groups operate.

British intelligence and the CIA consider the region to be the place where suicide bombings and cross-border attacks originate.

Cameron made a partial reference in his speech, saying: "Neither the Pakistan army nor Nato forces must ever tolerate sanctuaries for people plotting violence."

The Pakistani army has suffered big losses as a result of clearing out other federally administered tribal areas, and seems to be holding back from tackling North Waziristan, partly due to a peace deal having been struck.

Pakistani troops moved into South Waziristan in 2009. Pakistan says it lacks military capacity to lead an assault on a mountainous area that could lead to a mass exodus of refugees.

In the absence of troops on the ground, Britain supports what it sees as the highly effective use of US unmanned drones to bomb terrorist targets in the area, a practice that Pakistani politicians regularly denounce as being counter-productive and in breach of their sovereignty, and leading to the slaughter of innocent tribal elders. Only last week, Pakistan pulled out of tripartite talks on Afghanistan in anger at the US attacks.

Since 2007, about 164 drone strikes have been carried out, killing almost 1,000 militants.

• This article was amended on 6 April 2011. The original reported the promised education-aid total as £950m. This figure was provisionally reduced after the Guardian was contacted by the Department for International Development. Further clarification is being sought. The original article also said that the aid package included funding for 8,000 teachers. This has been corrected.

source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/apr/05/david-cameron-pakistan

Union Budget - Expectations of the education sector

Every year the Union Budget creates lot of eagerness in the mind of every Indian as regards the Government's plans for different sectors. The Education sector also hopes to get its due share in the Union budget every year.

Though the Government expenditure - both, state and central combined - on education has grown over the years, from about Rs.97,375 cr in 2004-05 to Rs.1,89,325 cr in 2008-09, (according to data estimates by the Center for Budget and Governance Accountability) - this cannot be considered enough if we look at the actual requirements and needs of the sector. 

As a share of total government expenditure, the spending on education is stagnating at about 11.6%, while as a share of GDP it has increased only marginally from 3.01% in 2004-05 to 3.4% in 2009-10. 

The National Knowledge Commission (NKC) in its report on Higher Education has said "The present support for higher education, at 0.7 per cent of GDP, is simply not adequate. In fact, over the past decade, in real terms, there has been a significant decline in the resources allocated for higher education, in the aggregate as also per student. In an ideal world, government support for higher education should be at least 1.5 per cent, if not 2 per cent of GDP, from a total of 6 per cent of GDP for education. This is easier said than done. But the government should endeavor to reach these levels by 2012. Even this magnitude of state financing, however, would not suffice for the massive expansion in higher education that is an imperative." 

The recent report of the District Information System for Education (DISE) says that 29% of elementary schools did not have a pucca building in 2009-10, up from 27% in 2007-08. Over 49% schools do not have boundary walls, only a slight improvement over two years when the proportion was 50%. Girls have a separate toilet in only 59% of schools, again only slightly better than 50% in 2007-8. Desperate parents are shifting their kids to private schools where enrollment is up from about 20% in 2007 to 24% in 2010. The number of Class 8 students taking private tuitions is also up from about 22% in 2007 to 31% in 2010. Most alarming is the fact pointed out in the DISE report that net enrollment ratio dropped from about 98% in Class 5 to 58% in Class 8. 

We have been talking of making India - knowledge capital of the world but is the government doing enough to provide good quality education? Budget speeches and political propaganda gives an impression that the government has increased spending on education in the past few years and the Right to Education Act (RTEA) is propelling an education revolution. But the reality appears to be different.

A meeting of state education secretaries in January last year had estimated that Rs 1.82 lakh crore will be needed to ensure that every child between 6 to 14 years gets good education, as per the RTEA act. This was to be given to the states over 5 years starting 2010. 

Let's not forget - our first generation scientists, scholars, teachers, leaders - all came from the village schooling system. If we want to see the country progressing in all areas - we must first improve our education system with the due budgetary support from the government.

source:http://www.indiaedunews.net/Today/Union_Budget_-_Expectations_of_the_education_sector_13581/