Intentional Growth And Consultation Group February 17: Fill & Download for Free

There is no simple clear cut answer to this is going to be a long one. Our problems long began before CPEC and CPEC has little to do with what’s fundamentally wrong with the Pakistani economy.First, the state of the economy:When asked about worsening fiscal position where the deficit escalated to 8.9 percent of GDP for last fiscal year, the government said that out of total collected tax revenue of Rs3.8 trillion, debt servicing consumed Rs2.1 trillion and then after providing share to provinces, the government had to borrow to meet defence, development and running of the government expenditure.A comparison of macro-indicators at end fiscal year 2018 with FY 2019 suggests that there has been a fast track deterioration of the economic situation during the last one year of the PTI rule.The following are the key indicators showing how things have gone wrong with the Pakistan’s economy.- GDP growth was recorded at 5.8 percent in 2018. As a result of slowdown in economy, growth rate for 2019 is expected to be 3 percent or even less.- Fiscal deficit has increased to Rs3.4 trillion at the end of June 2019 compared to Rs2.2 trillion when PML-N government left in June 2018. Amount wise this is the largest ever deficit in our history. In terms of percentage, fiscal deficit has been recorded at 8.9 percent compared to 6.6 percent on June end 2018. As percentage of GDP, 8.9 percent is the highest in last 30 years and 8.9 percent also has to be seen against PTI’s own set target of 5.1 percent in September last year. Missing the target by miles reflect complete lack of understanding on the part of PTI’s economic team. The high fiscal deficit has a direct consequence on the amount of borrowing as the following debt numbers will reflect.- Total debt and liabilities on the end of June 2018 was Rs30 trillion, which has now gone up to Rs40 trillion. This is the largest ever increase in debt and liabilities in one year. Pakistan’s total debt and liabilities in first 71 years was Rs30 trillion but under PTI government, one third more has been accumulated. This is unprecedented and reflects poor management of expenditure and revenue. If the trend continues like this, it is feared, the whole economic structure would collapse as our economy will not be able to sustain this.- Tax revenue was at a record level at more than Rs3,800 billion in 2018. First time in Pakistan history, tax revenue didn’t register any increase during 2019. During PML-N Government’s five years, the tax revenue increased 20 percent per annum in 4 out of 5 years. This was in spite of extremely low inflation and without significant devaluation - the two factors that automatically help increase tax revenues. It is said that the current revenue target of Rs5,550 billion seems very difficult to be achieved. It’s about 44 percent higher than the last year’s actual collection.- Inflation was at a record low at 3.9 percent in 2018. Last inflation figure reported by the present government is 10.3 percent.- SBP policy (interest) rate was 6.50 percent in mid-2018. It has been to 13.25 percent by the PTI government.- Stock Market was 42,847 at end PML-N government. It’s now hovering around 30,000 after touching 28,000.- Foreign exchange reserves were $15,913 million (SBP reserves $9,510 million) at end of PML-N government. Now it’s $15,630 (SBP reserves $8,271 million). This is in spite of around $12 billion obtained from friendly countries and IMF in last one year.- The only positive thing happened during the last one year is that the current account deficit which improved during PTI government. It was $19,897 million (6.3 percent of GDP) during 2018 fiscal year. It’s now $13,508 million (4.8 percent of GDP) in 2019. It’s ideal to reduce current account deficit by increasing exports. That has the best impact on the economy. The government, however, did it without increasing exports but due to reduction in imports. It is said that the policy to impact imports has considerably slowed down the economy.- Compared to GDP of $313 billion in 2018, our GDP has come down to $280 billion - a reduction of $33 billion only to achieve reduction of $4 billion in imports.- As a result of GDP decline, per capita GDP has gone down by more than 8 percent.- Large scale manufacturing has had negative growth during last one year.- Agriculture growth was less than 1 percent.- Massive currency devaluation took place with rupee going from 116 by end of PML-N government to around 160. This is the largest devaluation in last several decades with significant downside impact on our economy.- FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) has plummeted and is down by more than 50 percent.- As a result of significant reduction in growth and high inflation, the common Pakistani has been the worst affected. In last one year, more than 45 lac people have gone below the poverty line. In addition more than 15 lac people have lost their jobs.According to official projections, the GDP growth is expected to be around 2.4 percent while inflation will be in the range of 13 percent to 15 percent. The discount rate is expected to go further up in the range of 15 percent-16 percent.As a result, during the present fiscal year about five million people will go below the poverty line. This is on top of 4.5 million people who suffered this misery past one year. With declining growth rate, another 1.5 million or more Pakistanis will become unemployed.In the first two years of PTI rule, it is feared that about three million Pakistanis will become unemployed as against the party’s commitment of providing 10 million jobs over five years.Economic situation going from bad to worseThe Executive Summary is as follows:The debt crises of Pakistan began long before CPEC was even conceptualized. Pakistan currently is in the intial stages of a debt trap but to say it’s because of CPEC is a bad application of the correlation equaling causation fallacy.Pakistan’’s debt trap is due to its incredible inefficient and badly thought out government spending which is directed more towards plugging in leakages in it’s projects and public sector enterprises rather than meaningful investments for growth that lead to a high ROI in the future. Along with a non existent tax base that is actually shrinking even further.Lets go over the timeline first:Source: Pakistan’s Public debtSource: Pakistan’s Public debtThe following are the key insights to take away from this:CPEC was formally announced in April 2015. But Pakistan’s debt problem began in the 2007–2009 period, long before CPEC was announced.The primary cause of Pakistan’s debt is domestic debt rather than external debt. This is telling for a few reasons: External debt is normally tied to development projects. So a high external debt means that the country is borrowing loans from abroad to fund domestic development projects that spur growth and have good ROIs in the future that our coming generations can take advantage of.However, our external debt profile has not changed much. It’s our domestic debt that has sky rocketed. Domestic debt is tied closely to the government meeting it’s fiscal deficits or current expenditures. That is, the government is borrowing money from local banks or printing its own money just to meet it’s day to day expenditure.It’s ok for governments to take loans from abroad to fund major development projects and then pass on the debt for those projects to future generations as they will reap the harvest and return for those projects and it will lead to a betterment in their lives.If I borrow money today to buy a car for my son, I can make the payments for it as long as i live and then pass on the remaining to my son since he can take advantage of the car as well.But if i borrow money to pay for my booze and cigarettes and then pass on the debt i incurred for those to my son, I have curtailed his spending power in the future without passing on any meaningful betterment in his life in the future.That’s unfortunately what the Pakistan government has been doing: Borrowing from local banks to finance its day to day expenditures.Actually, we are currently borrowing to fund our entire defense, development and government administrative expenditures after paying back our debt obligations and our shares to the provinces.This has crowded out the private sector from bank capital for loans in order to grow their business as the banks would prefer to lend to the government as a safer bet. So the private sector growth has slowed leading to a lower tax revenue from businesses.Imran Khan has always been quite vocal about how Pakistan’s main problem is corruption, people not paying taxes and wealth stashed abroad. $200 billion stashed abroad in Swiss banks, which when bought back could be used to pay off our debt. Apparently the figure has been revised down to $12.5 billion and even that has not been bough back.As far as taxes go, the government keeps coming up with stats like “If every Pakistani paid 1000 rupees we could do blah blah blah”. Has Mr. Khan ever toured the rural countries from his Bani Gala residence? Nearly half of our population is below the age of 18 and earning below $2 a day. Where exactly are they supposed to scrounge up the money.Corruption then gets dragged in. I can honestly say anti-corruption drives in Pakistan and “Accountability” is used more as a political tool to keep civilian elected politicians in line more than anything. The Judiciary and Military and Civil service seem surprisingly immune from them.Also, Pakistan ranks on the same level of corruption as Vietnam which is growing at a rate of 6.8% and destined for a new Asian tiger ranking.The problem in Pakistan is legalized corruption: Where the law permits expenditures that the state has no business indulging in.An officers mess hall spending lakhs of rupees to upgrade the air conditioning of their living room and another few lakhs to maintain a pretty lawn outisde, it’s not considered corruption in Pakistan. But it is a waste.When the Director of some third rate government insitution gets a free fuel, a driver, a car, a house and perks and privileges in his formalized salary and work benefits, it’s not corruption. But it is a waste.We’ve restricted our scope to corruption because the idea of Zardari getting a 10% cut on a submarine deal or Sheikh Rashid accepting money bribes under the table inflames our passions. But most of the corruption in Pakistan doesn’t happen like that. Most of the corruption in Pakistan wouldn’t even be considered corruption.Its in the forms of perks, benefits, cars, drivers, petrol subsidies, free housing and countless other benefits distributed among elites and their networks of patronage which encompass millions of supporters for different political factions and entities.When the government distributes massive amounts of funds for discretionary spending by parliamentarians in their districts and said funds are spent on schools with no teachers, roads with no bidding and other pointless activities designed more to distribute resources among followers than actual growth, i have to ask if a poor country like ours can afford this.Pakistan’s problem isn’t a low tax base or corruption. It’s systemic waste. Legalized waste. Of precious tax payer money.On SOEs that run into billions of rupees in losses. On development projects that are offer no clear return on investments. Ghost schools. Inflated and bloated state organizations and their salaries. And countless other forms of legalized waste.Pakistan’s government institutions are often classified as “rent seeking” for a reason: they are still mired in the colonial era structures left behind by the British. The state was designed by the British colonialists to extract resources for the industrialization of England, to purchase the loyalty of local clan chiefs and tribal leaders who were loyal to the crown and to enable the aristocratic lifestyles of the ruling elite.We have barely gone beyond that way of thinking and the state currently continues to perpetuate it’s rent seeking strategy with long term economic plans being developed but continuously disrupted by political turmoil.And the political turmoil itself also bears discussion: The establishment would always prefer a weak parliament where no party has a strong majority so that civilian officials are unable to surmount a challenge to the unelected establishment.Unfortunately, weak civilian governments make weak economic policies since they are unable to gather the political will needed for tough economic measures. Especially when establishment agents are lurking around the corner to sponsor protests that cut civil leaders down to size.The military dictatorships often don’t fare much better either. While benefiting from massive amounts of US military and civil aid, their economic policies are not superior to the civilians despite protestations to the contrary.Actually, if you look at it from the data centric viewpoint, the PPP was actually the government from the 2000 to present day period that performed best in terms of boosting exports, and that too in a tough global environment during the 2008–2009 recession era.Which political party has been the best for Pakistan's economy? Trade stats reveal allOne of the core problems causing the debt crises in Pakistan is the current account deficit where imports have outstripped exports resulting in pressure on Pakistan’s dollar reserves when servicing foreign payments and debt obligations. Growing exports are a vital way to resolve this issue and to manage debt levels. Note that Pakistan’s current account deficit began during the Musharraf era and got carried on from there.Even if the trade deficit is growing, this is not necessarily a bad thing if the deficit is because of development related activities where machinery and infrastructure is being imported instead of luxury items like bulletproof BMWs (which the government imported massive quantities of). Countries like Turkey also have significant trade deficits but their trade deficits are due to productive imports that boost local economic growth.Also, the way that Pakistan has tried to reduce the current account defecit in terms of trade has been through constant currency devaluations in order to make exports more competitive. This policy has been consistently failing for a decade. Pakistan’s exports are noncompetitive because we have some of the highest electricity rates for our textile factories and other businesses. And we have failed to invest enough in small technology firms that could have made a niche out for themselves as businesses that dont require much upfront capital investment but offer immense revenues in dollar denominated currencies.Pakistan’s largest resource pool right now is its young population and if we properly trained and educated even a fraction of them and helped them set up local companies or exported them as talented man power, we could boost our exports enormously. Right now our primary foreign exchange is coming in the form of remittances.But instead we keep devaluing the currency and manage to increase maybe $500 million to $1 billion increase in exports and 3–4 billion USD decrease in imports?While inflating our debt obligations by almost 40–50%, shaving $30–35 billion USD off of our economy, choking imports and reducing economic activity to a low 2–3%?For $4 billion in account deficit reduction?In any case, growing exports won’t do much when they are matched with increasing borrowing from local banks due to high government expenditures that are mostly to cover for massive losses from 5 key elements:The five real fault-lines in the rupee-based economy are:the Rs1.7 trillion circular debtRs1.6 trillion leakages in Public Sector Enterprises (PSEs)trillion-rupee leakages in public procurement projects$2 billion leakage in the gas sectorThe Rs734 billion debt in the government’s commodity operations.These are the five sectors that need wholesale reforms. And, these are the five serious fault-lines where our reform basket is absolutely empty (resulting in the skyrocketing of our debt to Rs40 trillion).Source: ContinuityThere is no point in talking about increasing the tax base when these massive leakages in government revenue exist. It’s akin to pouring water in a jug with a hole at the bottom.Imran Khan has looked at the yawning deficits and declared austerity on the solution to our problems.Government expenditures are being slashed, the monetary policy tightened and more taxes being imposed.Thing about the tax revenue increase programs this past decade is is that they always have the same story: Government announces new tax, agriculture and retail push back, the government withdraws the tax plan and tries to squeeze out more taxes from the current, already squeezed small tax base. This leads to current tax payers start to find ways to avoid taxes and leads to tax base actually shrinking.Which is whats happening right now.Also, the imposition of taxes on retail sector has been done in the worst way possible: Indirect taxation, which is always just passed on to the end user and leads to sky rocketing inflation while eating into the already tiny margins of retailers like street vendors.Tell me: What exactly is the point of maintaining humongous tax drains like the Federal Bureau of revenue when they are incapable of collecting taxes directly from tax payers?And in some places, we area actually spending Rs 1000 to collect Rs. 100 in tax…The failure to develop an adequate tax base combined with incredibly wasteful government expenditures is at the heart of our current economic crises, not CPEC.The tendency to blame China for Pakistan’s debt problems is an angle pushed far more from Washington, New Delhi and Tokyo than anywhere else simply because that narrative suits their strategic interests.And while the irony of the Indian government excusing Pakistan’s poor economic management causing debt to blame China instead is not lost on me, it’s simply not true.As the Pakistani public is well aware of by now, crisis interventions by outside donors are no more than a stopgap solution to what has become a chronic problem: Pakistan, for all intents and purposes, does not have a tax base. Only about 1 percent of the population pays income tax. According to an IMF working paper authored by Serhan Cevik in 2016, Pakistan had a “tax revenue gap” equivalent to 10 percent of national GDP (or roughly $28 billion in 2016) and could potentially double its tax revenue-to-GDP ratio.While not even high-income countries manage to collect the full total of their potential tax revenues, the paper pointed out that Pakistan’s collection rate falls “significantly below” even countries of comparable circumstances. Not much has changed in the last two years. Pakistan’s Federal Board of Revenue confessed this past June that it would miss its original revenue collection target for the 2017-2018 fiscal year by 162 billion rupees ($1.32 billion).Until it builds an adequate tax base, Pakistan’s fiscal stability will continue to rely on outside donors. In other words: there won’t be any fiscal stability.Wanted: A Solid Tax Base in PakistanIn any case, the only thing Imran Khan has done is to impost MORE taxes on the already burdened tax base which is small enough as it is. And the reaction to that has been current tax payers taking their money abroad or finding ways to hide it because even they have reached their breaking point.Meanwhile vast swathes of the underground economy remain untaxed. Indirect taxation continues to be favored over direct taxation. Small businesses are seeing their already small margins shrink.And the end result of this sad story is that the FBR has recorded its lowest recent revenue collection in the near past. And our tax base, small as it is, is actually declining now.The Catastrophe of the IMFI could not have said anything better than what has been said by Mr. Abdul Sattar in his incredible take down of the disaster that has been the IMF and it’s economic policies. The IMF is a rapacious institution run to serve imperialist resource extraction projects across the globe and to think the IMF and it’s packages are solution to our problems is a folly beyond imagining. And the dark past of the IMF’s “austerity” mantra has a long track record of wrecking developing world economies.Long but worthy read:The US's voting share in in the IMF is 17.16 percent and in the World Bank 16.41 percent. Japan holds the next highest voting shares with 6.27 percent and 7.87 percent respectively. Washington also has the unique privilege of appointing the president of the World Bank and is the only country entitled to a permanent place among the Bank’s executive directors.So, it is no surprise that these institutions were employed as a tool to serve the interests of the global hegemon, punishing states that dared to challenge the rapaciousness of Western capitalism. For instance Salvador Allende, the first elected socialist leader of Chile, infuriated the US and its Western allies by asserting that his country should take care of its own natural resources and run the economy. This did not go down well with the arrogant modern imperial powers that are then said to have forced the World Bank to stop giving loans to the elected government in 1972, triggering an economic chaos that culminated in a military coup. Soon after the coup, the doors were opened for military dictator General Pinochet, whose brutal regime not only assassinated Allende but also decimated up to 130,000 Chileans in a 17-year despotic rule. The World Bank showered $350.5 million between on Chile 1973 and 1976, almost 13 times the $27.7 million it gave during the three-year Allende presidency.Integration of the developing countries' economies was also one of the main purposes of these institutions. To achieve this, they came up with the idea of the Structural Adjustment Programme that sought to pressure the Third World countries into privatizing industries and the service sector, cutting in government spending, liberalizing capital markets (which leads to unstable trading in currencies), promoting market-based pricing (which tends to raise the cost of basic goods) and raising interest rates.The World Bank instituted its SAPs in 1980 and the IMF imposed them in 1986. According to a research paper by Asad Sami, during 1980-93, 70 developing countries were subjected to 566 stabilization and structural adjustment programmes – with disastrous consequences. The author claims that between 1984 and 1990, Third World countries under SAPs transferred $178 billion to Western commercial banks. The enormous capital drain prompted Morris Miller, a Canadian former World Bank director, to remark, “Not since the Conquistadors plundered Latin America has the world experienced such a flow in the direction we see today." Such policies led to the stagnation of growth in developing countries besides doubling their debt burden to over $1.5 trillion by the end of the 1980s, doubling again to $3 trillion by the end of the 1990s.The ruling elite of the Western capitalist world ruthlessly exploited the developing countries, especially those of Latin America and Africa. To understand how such policies ruined the lives of millions across the world, one needs to see what happened in Peru, Mexico and other parts of the globe. In 1990, an IMF-sponsored stabilization package produced catastrophic consequences in Peru. Within no time fuel prices increased 31 times – by 2,968 percent – and that of bread 12 times – by 1,150 percent. The prices of most basic food staples increased by six or seven times – 446 percent in a single month – yet wages had already been compressed by 80 percent in the period prior to the adoption of these measures in August 1990. IMF SAPs were first imposed on Mexico in 1982 and by 1992 infant deaths due to malnutrition tripled, the minimum wage fell by 60 percent and the percentage of the population living in poverty rose from less than half to more than two-thirds.Such policies also hit Africa. The situation of the continent was not rosy prior to the arrival of the international monetary institutions in 1980 but even then during 1960-1980, Sub Saharan Africa’s GDP per capita grew by 36 percent. Between the 1980s and 2000s, it actually fell by 15 percent. Dictation by the international monetary institutions led to the rise of rampant poverty and by 2015, 413 million people were living on less than $1.90 a day. Despite following these anti-people policies, the average life expectancy for Sub Saharan Africa is only 47 years (the lowest in the world), a drop of 15 years since 1980. Forty percent of the population suffers from malnutrition that causes low birth weight among infants and stunts growth in children.Advocates of a free market economy could brag about the increasing trade that the mineral rich continent witnessed from 1989 to 1999. It is estimated that Sub Saharan Africa’s trade as a percentage of GDP (a key indicator of globalization) increased from 78.1 percent to 95.6 percent; in dollar terms, trade grew from $175 billion in 1990 to $187 billion in 1999; for the same period, foreign direct investment jumped from $923 million to $7.9 billion in 1999.But contrary to the tall claims of international monetary institutions, export expansion and rising foreign investment in Africa neither increased growth nor reduced poverty or debt. In reality, most African exports are raw materials, and non-oil commodity prices dropped by 35 percent on average from 1997 and 2004. Tax holidays and profit repatriation might have helped foreign companies to accumulate immense wealth but made very little difference to the lives of millions of Africans.Per capita income, one of the tools to measures the development of a country, also fell between 1980 – when SAPs were imposed on 36 of Sub-Saharan Africa’s 47 countries – and 2004. It fell for most Sub Saharan countries by 25 percent during the 1980s and for 18 countries these incomes were lower in 1999 than in 1975. In 1960, Sub-Saharan Africa’s per capita income was about one-ninth of that in high-income OECD countries; by 1998, it had deteriorated dramatically to about 1/18.Africa’s external debt has increased by more than 500 percent since 1980, to $417 billion in 2017. SAPs have transferred more than $229 billion in debt payments from Sub-Saharan Africa to the West since 1980. Africa spends four times more on debt interest payments than on healthcare. This combined with cutbacks in social expenditure caused healthcare spending in the 42 poorest African countries to fall by 50 percent during the 1980s. More than 200 million Africans have no access to health services as hundreds of clinics, hospitals and medical facilities have been closed.The catastrophic impacts of the policies imposed by international monetary institutions were not confined to Africa and Latin America, as discussed in the first part of this article; they also played havoc with the lives of millions in Asia and other parts of the world as well. In Asia, the IMF and the World Bank first encouraged financial liberalization that partly led to the financial crisis in South East Asia during the decade of the 1990s, and they then prescribed a disastrous recipe to address this crisis.Several experts believe that the crisis was caused in large part by South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia's heavy reliance on short-term foreign loans and openness to hot money. When it became apparent in 1997 that private enterprises would not be able to meet their payment obligations, international currency markets panicked and Asian currencies plummeted. What they forget to mention is the ideology of international monetary institutions that encourage the reliance of countries on short-term foreign loans and openness to hot money which help speculators fulfill their gargantuan appetite for profit and money.After pushing these countries towards a crisis, the IMF treated the Asian meltdown like other emergency situations, giving assistance only in exchange for structural adjustment policies, which was totally unnecessary because these states were not facing a budgetary deficit issue. Nonetheless, the fund instructed governments to cut spending, which deepened the economic slowdown. In South Korea, for example, a country whose income approached European levels, unemployment skyrocketed from approximately 3 percent to 10 percent. 'IMF suicides' became common among workers who had lost their jobs and dignity.In Indonesia, the worst-hit country, poverty rates rose from an official level of 11 percent before the crisis to 40-60 percent, and GDP declined by 15 percent in one year. Malaysia stood out as a country that refused IMF assistance and advice. Instead of further opening its economy, Malaysia imposed capital controls, in an effort to eliminate speculative trading in its currency. While the IMF mocked this approach when adopted, the Fund later admitted that it succeeded.The IMF recipe proved to be very disastrous for the common Indonesian who greatly suffered because of the policies imposed by the global financial body. Prior to the 1997-98 financial crisis, Indonesia had a relatively comfortable debt situation. The government borrowed primarily from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and a group of bilateral donors grouped in the Consultative Group on Indonesia (CGI), for funding its development budget. Jakarta approached IMF in 1997 for a $43 billion bailout and within a few years, the bailout turned out to be a great curse for the masses, adding to their miseries and making their lives difficult. In January 2003, the government of the then president Megawati Soekarnoputri raised the prices on fuel (22 percent), telephone (15 percent) and electricity (6 percent). This was happening in a country where inflation was 10 percent in 2002 and more than half of the country's 220 million population lived on less than $2 a day and burdened with more than 40 million unemployed souls.To tide over the crisis, it was suggested that Indonesia should take specific steps to liberalise trade and investment which included: reducing tariffs on all imported food products to five percent and cutting non-agricultural tariffs to 10 percent by 2003; opening banks to foreign ownership by June 1998; and lifting restrictions on foreign banks by February 1998. Despite taking these drastic measures, the country's financial woes did not decrease. The official debt burden increased from 27 percent of GDP prior to the crisis to more than 100 percent by the end of 1999, before declining gradually. In fact Indonesia, which was ranked as middle-income and middle-indebted before the crisis (at the same level as its neighbours, Thailand and the Philippines), came to be ranked as belonging to the SILIC (severely indebted low income countries) category.Such reckless policies also contributed to the immiserating of the people in the Philippines where the government kept domestic wages low at the behest of the international financial bodies. This badly affected the marginalized sectors of society, forcing 54 percent of the population to live in absolute poverty while the government debt service was eating up 50 percent of the national budget.This was the brief history of the disastrous impacts caused by the policies of the global financial institutions. It is difficult to imagine why we still insist on going to such institutions. The policies of international monetary institutions clearly indicate that they seek to benefit the Global North. Their agenda is to facilitate the plundering of third-world countries by the advanced capitalist states. Their mission is not opaque. Their purpose is not mysterious. They are very vocal in making it clear that the Structural Adjustment Programmes are meant to promote the free market. They want developing countries, including Pakistan, to reduce import restrictions, work for the advancement of exports, carry out the privatization of public industries, control wages and leave the social sector at the mercy of market forces.Which of these points could help the economy? Let us begin with privatization. The mantra of selling state concerns was used to convince people that it would help the country repay loans. We started the process of privatization in the 1980s, which gathered pace after the restoration of democracy in 1988. According to the finance ministry our total debt and external liabilities was $20.90 billion in 1990, rising to $38.86 billion in 2007 and $99.1 billion now. We have sold out more than 160 state-run entities since the 1980s, rendering hundreds and thousands of people jobless. Instead of seeing the country free from debt, what we see today is nothing but a phenomenal surge in our external debt and liabilities which is likely to haunt our coming generations for decades or maybe centuries.Did these much-vaunted reforms at the behest of international monetary institutions bring any positive change in the lives of millions of Pakistanis? The answer is not difficult to imagine. While the World Bank claims poverty has been reduced, asserting it fell to 29.5 percent in 2014 from 64.3 percent in 2002, Pakistan’s first ever official report on multidimensional poverty, launched by the PML-N government in 2016, says nearly 39 percent of Pakistanis live in multidimensional poverty. The other social development indicators that were meant to be visible after the economic reforms seem to be nowhere either. The country houses more than 25 million out-of-school children. More than 40 percent of children are stunted. Infant mortality rate was 63.3 deaths per thousand live births in 2018. Eighty percent of diseases are caused by contaminated water which is a rare commodity for the majority of the poor, and Hepatitis has become an epidemic in several parts of the country.Since the arrival of the Tabdeeli Sarkar, inflation has skyrocketed. The prices of petrol and gas have witnessed a phenomenal surge. The champions of employment creation are planning to render tens of thousands workers jobless by privatizing state-run concerns. Given all this, it is more likely that the prescription of the IMF will further add to the miseries. Therefore, it is important that we think of the alternatives. Following the IMF's dictation will do no good. If the advisers of Zardari, Nawaz and Imran are unanimous in seeking help from global financial bodies then the people must realise that they just want to draw to hefty salaries from the public exchequer but want workers' wages to be stagnated. They want to see austerity in the lives of millions of people but would love to stay in five-star hotels and make expensive foreign trips from the taxes of common people. It is time we came up with our own alternative.Source #1 :Is the IMF the cure?Source #2: Is the IMF the cure?We have been under IMF led programs for decades. They said privatize industries, we privatized nearly 160 industries since the 1980s and yet our debt levels have gone up rather than down. We have devalued a currency to the point that it’s 160 rupees to a dollar now, yet our exports are meager while our debt obligations and economic size has shrunk.We shouldn’t blame the IMF: We should blame ourselves. The IMF was never set up to help us. Their macro stabilization programs have had mixed successes and are a generalized template solution that doesn’t take into account region or country specific condition. They apply one size fits all solutions to countries as diverse as Laos, El Salvador. Egypt and Pakistan.The IMF is designed to serve the interests of the people who hold voting shares in it’s board. The IMF conditions and strings that are applied to it’s loan programs are designed to kick down the doors of protections for local, developing economies so they can be rapaciously exploited by American companies and firms. Wages are slashed, social safety nets discarded, taxes on businesses and industries withdrawn, mineral rights given away at throw away prices. The IMF is designed to enable the neo-colonial exploitation of the Global south and has played it’s part in the wealth transfer from the south to the Developed North long after those countries stopped being colonies on paper.It’s time we parted ways with this parasitic institution and looked for home grown solutions and alternative financing institutions like the AIIB.GrowthThe Austerity driven model of economic stabilization proposed by the IMF and other economic institutions had disastrous results, not just in the above mentioned states but also Greece during the recent economic crises.The incredible disaster of the Greek austerity debacle is something that will go down in history books. There are many fingers to point in this drama: The IMF (to a lesser extent this time) and the Greek government with their own bad spending and number fudging. The EU banks and the political chiefs who steered it’s fate perhaps gave the single greatest blow to the EU project when they pushed for austerity to “punish” Greece for some perceived sin.When the recession hit, and a new Socialist government exposed New Democracy’s cooked books, investors fled. The Greek government could not rollover its debt and risked default. Greek banks, which held large amounts of government debt, became precarious. German and French banks also had invested so heavily in Greece that their stability was in jeopardy. The Greek government and banks were so closely intertwinedthat a default by one could bring down the other.The sensible solution at this point would have been to compel foreign banks to write off large parts of their Greek investments. The banks knew the risks when they made their loans and presumably priced that into the interest they charged. The European Central Bank stoutly resisted this, fearing for the stability of these imprudent banks.Instead, the EU and other international financial institutions offered what has widely been described as a “bail-out.” This was not, for the most part, money to support human services or other forms of consumption. Instead, this was money for Greece to send right back to its external creditors. In essence, the international institutions were bailing out their own irresponsible banks but laundering the money through the Greek government.As a price for this “bail-out,” the EU and its partners demanded crippling austerity: tax increases, widespread lay-offs of public employees, and massive cuts in pensions and other social supports. Laying off so many workers and pauperizing pensioners sharply reduced demand, which triggered further lay-offs and wage cuts in the private sector. As the depression deepened, unemployment topped 25 percent. When austerity devastated the Socialists’ working-class constituency, the party was effectively destroyed.As powerful as the EU is, however, it was unable to rewrite the basic rules of economics. Each round of austerity further depressed the economy, reducing revenues and increasing Greece’s deficit. Even from the creditors’ perspective, austerity was self-defeating.Rather than recognizing the error of their ways, the international organizations doubled down on austerity, demanding still deeper cuts to government employment and basic public services. The hypocrisy was rich: Greece’s deficit was growing precisely because it was complying with the EU's austerity plan, whose implementation predictably misfired.With their economy in free-fall and the EU showing no inclination to reduce the pressure, Greek voters turned to anti-austerity parties. On the right, this elevated the neo-fascist, swastika-flashing Golden Dawn, whose leaders faced charges for killing political opponents. The majority, however, went to Syriza, a leftist group that pledged to stare down the EUand end austerity.The EU, however, stonewalled, forcing Syriza to choose between taking Greece out of the EU and implementing further rounds of crushing austerity. Syriza blinked in this stare-down, fracturing its membership and earning the ire of its voters. Since then, it has been governing in fragilecoalitions with small conservative parties, largely abandoning the aspirational program it ran on.Eventually, the International Monetary Fund pressured the EU to relent on austerity. But by then, the Greek economy had shrunk by more than a quarter, numerous Greek families had horror stories of losing their homes, being unable to support themselves, or lacking medical care for treatable conditions, and Syriza had been thoroughly discredited with Greek voters.Will we learn from the Greece austerity debacle?Contrast the EU’s austerity push with the Keynesian Stimulus driven economic recovery championed by President Obama in the US during the 2008 recession which urged that in the face of slowing Economic Growth the government must inject a stimulus into the economy to stir up consumption and spending and avoid a short recession turning into a long one.Another group, the Keynesians, subscribed to the policies advocated by their namesake in the aftermath of the Great Depression, when John Maynard Keynes argued that, by taking care of unemployment, the economy would look after itself: the need was to stimulate consumption and demand to prevent a negative spiral of declining confidence, lower spending, and more job losses and firm bankruptcies. This is, in effect, the policy pursued by President Obama, with large-scale stimulus packages (although the magnitude has been debated), including substantial investment in the automobile industry. A third group of supply-side economists argued that the problem was over-regulation, or ‘red tape’, and advocated massive deregulation. They believed that abolition of employment rights would enable wages to fall and unwanted labour to be shed, allowing firms to compete better in a global market. However, a new school of thought emerged, labelled ‘austerions’ by the economics Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman.Five years on, the results of the ‘great austerity experiment’ are at last becoming clear (Fig 1). In the USA, where a Keynesian approach was adopted, the economy has recovered and is now on a sustained upward trajectory. The Eurozone is experiencing mixed fortunes. Some countries, such as Germany, are also experiencing sustained growth, but those that adopted stringent austerity policies, such as Ireland, Greece, Spain and Portugal, have yet to recover. Iceland, one of the worst affected countries, held a referendum on austerity; 93% of the population rejected it and, so far, austerity has been delayed and limited. As a result, Iceland has had much better economic performance than the latter group of austerity cases (in part, enabled by its ability to devalue its currency and, in so doing, boost fishing exports). Paradoxically, the credit-rating agencies, which were once in the vanguard of calls for austerity, are now downgrading Italian banks explicitly because of concerns that austerity is choking off growth.The UK did make an initial recovery but there too the imposition of stringent austerity measures by the newly elected coalition government in 2010 arrested it. This evidence has not gone unnoticed and, in a series of elections across Europe in 2012, voters have rejected austerity and elected politicians offering an alternative, most notably in France but also in German regional elections. Yet their reasons for doing so are not simply because these policies have failed to fix the economy. They are also rejecting them because they are seeing the signs of the human cost that they incur, something that many politicians have sought to ignore.Austerity: a failed experiment on the people of EuropeWhen Austerity has been such a debacle across the Globe as a policy measure to stabilize economies, why exactly should the government engage in it yet again at a time when the economy is slowing down and austerity measures will heap unnecessary pain on already hapless masses?The Keynesian stimulus approach has already show tried and true effectiveness in the US and other western hemisphere economic recoveries. CPEC as an investment tool is an excellent way to achieve such a stimulus by spurring economic activity and growth and allowing the government to stabilize it’s finances while it works to cut away the wasteful and nonproductive expenditures and grow its tax base at the same time.CPEC transitions economy away for global warming eraRecently I shared this news clipping about Pakistani and Chinese scientists on the verge of a scientific breakthrough where they could develop a strain of hybrid rice that can withstand drought and high heat conditions:Pakistan, Chinese researchers on the brink of hybrid rice breakthroughI recall that 2 or 3 years ago when the CPEC master plan was revealed and there was a huge concern over a previously unrevealed agricultural aspect of CPEC. Everyone up until then had assumed it was an infrastructure, energy and logistics related project.In all honesty, I consider the agricultural aspect of CPEC to be the most important one because it’s based around three core objectives:Transition Pakistan’s agriculture away from water intensive crops to crops that utilize less water but contribute more to the GDPTransition from current breed of crops to a new strain that are more resistant to the drought and arid conditions we will face in the 21st century of Global WarmingTransition from the British canal based system of watering crops via flood irrigation which is incredibly wasteful to new systems like Drip Water irrigation and crop zoning etc that are more efficient at water usage.Pakistan is lunging into a serious water crisis. The country is rapidly moving from being a water abundant country to a water-scarce country.With its annual water availability falling below 1,000 cubic metres per person, it may in fact have already crossed this threshold. This is partly due to depletion of its fresh water resources because of increasing population, adverse climate variations like drought and inconsistent monsoon patterns, and lack of storage facilities. And it is partially due to the unchecked demand for these many limited available resources.The scope of the crisis can be demonstrated by a few key facts: About 92 percent of Pakistan is classified as semi-arid to arid and the vast majority of Pakistanis are dependent on surface and groundwater sources from a single source – the Indus River basin.More than 90 percent of the country’s water is being used by the agriculture sector where conventional irrigation methods are undertaken.About 90 percent of the country’s agricultural production comes from land irrigated by the Indus Basin Irrigation System, firmly linking national food security to water levels in the Indus River basin. And, Pakistan’s water storage capacity is limited to a maximum 30-day supply, far below the 1,000-day storage capacity recommended for a country with its climatic characteristics.With water availability per person declining year by year, and demand for food production continuously increasing, Pakistan faces not only a water crisis but also serious concerns regarding its future food security. This situation also has clear implications for the government’s efforts to become an upper middle income country by 2025.The relevant authorities should carry out a study to assess the national water demand which should focus on different water users, water balance, traditional and emerging demands, and the impacts of climate change on demand by 2025 and 2050. In order for the government to take informed decisions, sectoral demands have to be estimated for all sectors. This will give an idea to the policymakers about which sectors consume most water.Studies like these will also help realize the contribution each sector makes towards the national economy as per their water usage. For instance, according to a report, four major crops that consume about 80 percent of the country’s water resources (wheat, rice, cotton and sugarcane) generate less than five percent of the national GDP.Furthermore, experts suggest that rain water harvesting must be introduced in local households, in both urban and rural areas. Flood irrigation should be a criminal act that is still being practiced in Pakistan; this has to stop. Improved irrigation methods and crop zoning are the country’s need at the moment. There is a need to reuse water in houses; for example, the water used in our kitchens can be reused in our toilets.Disappearing waterI understand that agriculture is not the most interesting subject and in this day and age we have just assumed the constant availability of food.But climate change is going to complete alter the environmental, economic and social landscape of the Pakistani territories. And it is imperative that we pursue the agricultural related initiatives of CPEC at all costs and as fast as possible.Let me stress that a little more strongly: Even if we take on $100 billion of debt under CPEC, it will be worth it if for no other reason, we can get our agriculture to survive in the Global Warming era.It is disingenuous to talk about finances when we are talking about the very survival of the country. If you think I’m being over dramatic, I would urge you to read up on the catastrophic consequences of what will happen if we continue to keep our water usage and agriculture as is and refuse to adapt. We are seeing a mini version of this dark future in Karachi where water mafia must be paid to get your water tanks filled and access to clean water is shrinking every day.Imagine that on a nationwide level with violent mobs and riots over water shortages, food prices sky rocketing due to crop failures and militarization of water access to secure scarce water resources for the state and it’s elite.The Maldives are currently on the chopping block of Climate Change and people believe that they as a state will be wiped out by rising sea levels. Should we tell the Maldives that it’s not financially feasible to construct infrastructure that will adapt them to the Climate change era?Quorans who are often suspicious of CPEC as a colonization project: India is one of the key partner with Israel on how to adapt biotechnology in the agricultural sector so that water usage is optimized and crops adapt to the hot, arid and water stressed future. And even increase their yields in some cases. So if it’s ok for India to undertake such projects, then why not Pakistan?One more thing: While ~50+% of our economy stems from the services sector, the other half is predominately still agricultural at 23% and Industrial at 18%.Besides ensuring that our agricultural sector survives into the 21st century with the adaption of cutting edge agricultural tech from China, CPEC also allows us to begin to transition our economy away from sectors that are in danger from climate change towards new sectors that will surive the global warming era.An example of that is trade logistics: CPEC’s massive road, rail, port and highway network is planned to be integrated into China’s OBOR project so that we can develop new sources of revenue in the form of logistics related fees from Chinese companies and traders utilizing CPEC infrastructure.This is a good example of an economic sector Pakistan currently doesn’t have but it will definitely need in the future to diversify away from purely Agricultural related exports.Take a look at some of our exports by category data in 2018:source: Pakistan Exports By CategoryOne of the more sensible and realistic calculations for our earnings from CPEC toll fees was given at $2-$2.5 billion USD a year.CPEC toll income — myth and reality | The Express TribuneOur agricultural exports in 2018 are at $15 b USD a year.With 2.5 billion USD in toll fees, we have managed to diversify our export or dollar related earnings by around 16% away from our top earning crops.This is a good start. And we need to continue building on it. Our economy must transition away from purely agriculture related earnings in the Global Heat Wave of the future and move towards sectors that are immune or semi immune to Global Warming.This is how CPEC plans to accomplish this using a mix of financing for the agricultural sector, new plans for fertilizer usage, new watering techniques and sustainable agriculture through more revenue per crop capita:For agriculture, the plan outlines an engagement that runs from one end of the supply chain all the way to the other. From provision of seeds and other inputs, like fertiliser, credit and pesticides, Chinese enterprises will also operate their own farms, processing facilities for fruits and vegetables and grain. Logistics companies will operate a large storage and transportation system for agrarian produce.It identifies opportunities for entry by Chinese enterprises in the myriad dysfunctions that afflict Pakistan’s agriculture sector. For instance, “due to lack of cold-chain logistics and processing facilities, 50% of agricultural products go bad during harvesting and transport”, it notes.Enterprises entering agriculture will be offered extraordinary levels of assistance from the Chinese government. They are encouraged to “[m]ake the most of the free capital and loans” from various ministries of the Chinese government as well as the China Development Bank. The plan also offers to maintain a mechanism that will “help Chinese agricultural enterprises to contact the senior representatives of the Government of Pakistan and China”.The government of China will “actively strive to utilize the national special funds as the discount interest for the loans of agricultural foreign investment”. In the longer term the financial risk will be spread out, through “new types of financing such as consortium loans, joint private equity and joint debt issuance, raise funds via multiple channels and decentralise financing risks”.The plan proposes to harness the work of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps to bring mechanization as well as scientific technique in livestock breeding, development of hybrid varieties and precision irrigation to Pakistan. It sees its main opportunity as helping the Kashgar Prefecture, a territory within the larger Xinjiang Autonomous Zone, which suffers from a poverty incidence of 50 per cent, and large distances that make it difficult to connect to larger markets in order to promote development. The prefecture’s total output in agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery amounted to just over $5 billion in 2012, and its population was less than 4 million in 2010, hardly a market with windfall gains for Pakistan.However, for the Chinese, this is the main driving force behind investing in Pakistan’s agriculture, in addition to the many profitable opportunities that can open up for their enterprises from operating in the local market. The plan makes some reference to export of agriculture goods from the ports, but the bulk of its emphasis is focused on the opportunities for the Kashgar Prefecture and Xinjiang Production Corps, coupled with the opportunities for profitable engagement in the domestic market.The plan discusses those engagements in considerable detail. Ten key areas for engagement are identified along with seventeen specific projects. They include the construction of one NPK fertilizer plant as a starting point “with an annual output of 800,000 tons”. Enterprises will be inducted to lease farm implements, like tractors, “efficient plant protection machinery, efficient energy saving pump equipment, precision fertilization drip irrigation equipment” and planting and harvesting machinery.The plan shows great interest in the textiles industry in particular, but the interest is focused largely on yarn and coarse cloth.Meat processing plants in Sukkur are planned with annual output of 200,000 tons per year, and two demonstration plants processing 200,000 tons of milk per year. In crops, demonstration projects of more than 6,500 acres will be set up for high yield seeds and irrigation, mostly in Punjab. In transport and storage, the plan aims to build “a nationwide logistics network, and enlarge the warehousing and distribution network between major cities of Pakistan” with a focus on grains, vegetables and fruits. Storage bases will be built first in Islamabad and Gwadar in the first phase, then Karachi, Lahore and another in Gwadar in the second phase, and between 2026-2030, Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar will each see another storage base.Asadabad, Islamabad, Lahore and Gwadar will see a vegetable processing plant, with annual output of 20,000 tons, fruit juice and jam plant of 10,000 tons and grain processing of 1 million tons. A cotton processing plant is also planned initially, with output of 100,000 tons per year.“We will impart advanced planting and breeding techniques to peasant households or farmers by means of land acquisition by the government, renting to China-invested enterprises and building planting and breeding bases” it says about the plan to source superior seeds.In each field, Chinese enterprises will play the lead role. “China-invested enterprises will establish factories to produce fertilizers, pesticides, vaccines and feedstuffs” it says about the production of agricultural materials.“China-invested enterprises will, in the form of joint ventures, shareholding or acquisition, cooperate with local enterprises of Pakistan to build a three-level warehousing system (purchase & storage warehouse, transit warehouse and port warehouse)” it says about warehousing.Then it talks about trade. “We will actively embark on cultivating surrounding countries in order to improve import and export potential of Pakistani agricultural products and accelerate the trade of agricultural products. In the early stages, we will gradually create a favorable industry image and reputation for Pakistan by relying on domestic demand.”Exclusive: CPEC master plan revealedAnd Logistics is only part of the equation: Chinese investments are a diverse portfolio of energy, tourism, mining, public transportation and real estate to give a few examples. Most if not all of these are good diversification away from climate change impacted economic sectors that we expect major disruptions in once water shortages and droughts start to hit more frequently in the next decade.I really want to under line this point again because recall that in the beginning of the answer I talked about how it’s ok to take on debt that ensures the survival and prosperity of our future generations, we should only avoid debt that is for day to day running of current government expenses.CPEC debt is a debt that we are undertaking today to ensure that our children have a future in an era where the Indus Basin will begin turning into a desert and our children will grow up eating crops and meats that are far different from the ones we grew up eating because in their era, those crops and sources of food might not exist in our region anymore.The TLDR Conclusion:Pakistan’s Debt is because of two major reasons:Lack of tax baseEnormous wastage and leakages in government spendingPakistan has been under IMF programs for decades and they have never fixed the government’s problems because the IMF exists to push for a neo-liberal free market order that favors the US rather than fix Pakistan’s problemsAt a time of slow economic growth, embracing an IMF led austerity drive is a suicidal quest. The 2008 economic crises and government responses to it showed that Keynesian style stimulus packages to stir up the economy is what leads to recovery.CPEC is a Keynesian style stimulus for the Pak economy at a time when it’s slowing down. The OBOR, AIIB and CPEC style of infrastructure and trade led growth is critical for low growth developing countries to stir economic growth and avoid the misery of Greek austerity.Beyond just stirring economic growth, CPEC is part of Pakistan’s transition away from an agricultural/semi industrialized country to a more balanced mix of logistics/industry/trade/agriculture/consumption. It also allows the country to adapt to the water stressed, heat wave era of the Climate Change epoch of history.Not everything about CPEC is rosy. This would be a dishonest answer if I said that. We do need to investigate how much our local industries would be impacted by Chinese imports. We do need to investigate that the projects in CPEC have the right ROIs given their expenditure. That these projects are aligned with our long term aims. And that the debt repayments can be met with the ROI from these projects. These are basic precautions.But in general, CPEC is a lifeline for a country like ours thats trapped in debt and low growth in the face of annihilation from climate change. We’re supposed to face the potential heat death of the planet with our economy chained to a wall.The old Pakistan is gone. This will be our second major transformation after 71. And in some ways, it will be more dangerous to navigate and more critical to our survival. The Indus Basin has always been there in the living memory of mankind. It might not be in the near future.We will be walking our children to schools in the deserts of southern Punjab. And driving past the dried out caverns of the now dead Ravi. The very rice we eat will taste different. I’ll tell my children stories of how fruit used to be so cheap and abundant in my life time. How we’d let water run into the street while washing our cars. How Monsoon used to be a fun time to play in the canal rather than a tropical flood that washed away entire communities.A memory can only survive in the minds of the living. When the earth changes, we must change with it. The age of arrogant men telling women to stay in the home is over. The age of you turning your nose up at your neighbor because his faith is different from you is over. It’s a fight to survive the heat death of the earth, we will need all the help we can get. We need to rethink our ideas about “honor” and “Izzat” and right and wrong. The uncaring laws of the universe dont care for our mortal hang ups.CPEC will turn farmers into truck drivers, gun smiths into bio tech technicians and cloth weavers into aqua farmers.I suppose in a way, it’s like changing shape and form, changing bodies and the chemicals that animate them. CPEC will change us all. And there might be no future without it.The translucence of flames beat against the airagainst our skins. This can be done withor without clothes on. This can be done withor without wine or whiskey but never without water:evaporation is also ongoing. Most visibly in this casein the form of wisps of steam rising from the just washed hairof a form at the fire whose beauty was in the earth’sturning, that night and many nights, transcendent.I felt heat changing me. The word for this istransdesire, but in extreme cases we call it transdireor when this heat becomes your maker we saytransire, or when it happens in front of a hearth:transfire.On Trans by Miller ObermanA man drives an improvised motorcycle truck, balancing a precarious load behind him. Perhaps the best image to portray our economy, straddled by debt, innovating it’s way to survival in the 21st century.Image source: China’s $62 Billion Bet on Pakistan

Being a alumni,i would like to answer this question,Actually Salary package depends on factors like specialization, Institute, Company offering job, students academic performance, work experience etc.The placements are tremendous and you’ll get plenty of opportunities to choose from but it is your duty to maintain a capable academic record so that you can fetch a job in the best company that visits the university for recruitment.The placement in MBA at LPU is about 95% and above. Almost all batches were placed in well-known companies. Average package offered for MBA students is 4.5 LPA. Some of the leading companies (like Practo, Think and Learn, Colgate, ICICI Prudential, Tech Mahindra, Axis bank, WNS, CISCO etc) recruited a good number of students from our department with the maximum package of 17 lakhs.Every year,Around 550+ companies visit for such activities and campus-recruitment of students from LPU. And this year for batch graduating in 2019, already more than 650 placement/internship drives have been conducted till February 2019 with leading industry giants (more than 90% being MNCs).This companies are visited LPU campus for recruitment.Colgate Palmolive, Hindustan Unilever, Godrej Consumer, SAP Labs, Asian Paints, Bajaj Allianz, Federal Bank,Moodys Analytics, Blue Star, Zomato,Berger Paints, Marico, Havells, Apollo Munich Health Insurance, CavinCare, Hetitch, Nerolac Paints, Oyo Rooms, S& P Global Market Intelligence, HDFC Bank, Swiggy,Kotak Mahindra Bank, Luminous Power, Bharti AXA, Decathlon Sports, Exide Industries, Emami, Eye-Q Vision, ITC Limited, Janalakshmai Financial Services, Kelloggs, MRF, Naukri, Moodys Analytics, WNS Global, Writer Corporation, Nivesh Group, OCWEN Financial, Practo, Redington, Transport Corporation of India, etc.The industrial exposure is also offered on the campus. The university organizes many external workshops for the holistic learning of the students along with exemplary placements. University’s environment is quite decent that offers extensive exposure to its students. They also organize interactive sessions, learning workshops and guest lectures on a regular basis.International Placement has been offered to LPU students by companies like Khimji Ramdas, SobhaDevelopers,The Oberoi Mauritius, AAA Dynamic Consulting, MIOEC,APDC,Emrill, Tex Fasteners, Ariana Television Network, Maw Nepal, Hengtong Optic-Electric India, Medicopedia etc. by recruiting LPU students for locations across USA, Middle-East, South Asia, South Africa etc and offering a highest salary package of up to Rs. 24 LPA.Then finally the most important thing, it is your caliber and actual learning that counts. Since you are evaluated by the interviewer before your salary is decided. So, these factors work together, some antagonistically and some synergistically to decide your salary package.Have written above things, I will add that even if after MBA you land a job at an average or below average salary , then please do not get disheartened and instead focus on learning on your first job and improving your professional skills. The first job will help you learn practical business and management skills which will be quite different from your academic knowledge.Most important will be to work with dedication in your job and do learn to manage your boss. If you work hard with discipline and at the same time are able to manage your boss , career growth and thus higher salary will be natural conclusion of your well intention ed and STRATEGIC efforts.With a few years experience under your belt, your market value will increase and this can improve your compensation levels.For more information kindly visit Lovely Professional University websites or call on Tel: +91-1824-404404Thank You!

"That missionary activity was a tool and an adjunct of colonial expansion is no secret. And colonialism is not dead; it has only taken a new, more sophisticated form.”- by Sultan ShahinThe Catholic archdiocese of the Indian capital has launched a year-long campaign of prayer and fasting in view of next year general elections, saying India faces a turbulent political future that threatens the country's democracy, UCANEWS reported.In a pastoral letter read out in all the parishes of Delhi Archdiocese on Sunday, May 13, Archbishop Anil Couto called on Catholics to start a campaign of prayer and fasting on Friday ahead of elections in April or May 2019."As we look forward towards 2019 when we will have a new government, let us begin a prayer campaign for our country" from May 13, on the anniversary of the Apparition of the Blessed Mother at Fatima in Portugal, the pastoral letter said.The five-year term of the federal government led by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) ends in May 2019.Delhi Archdiocese launches prayer and fast campaign for India’ - Vatican NewsPreparing for the harvest …A new mood of aggressive evangelism has been emanating from America. Well-funded, superbly networked, backed by the highest of the land, seized of its moral supremacy, it has India as one of its key targets, reveals VK Shashikumar in a disturbing exposéhttps://joshuaproject.net/countries/INThis could be the plot of a fevered thriller. A jingoistic president, multi-million dollar corporations, high technology, a grand if furtive mission, networks spanning the globe, and biblical invocations.Only it’s real. And its got India in its crosshair.Religious expansionism has not witnessed this scale, scope, and state resources in a long time. Detailed investigations by Tehelka reveal that American evangelical agencies have established in India an enormous, well-coordinated and strategised religious conversion plan. The operation was launched in the early 1990s but really came into its own after George W Bush Jr, an avowed born-again Christian, became president of the United States in 2001. Since then, aggressive evangelists have found pro-active support from the new administration in their efforts to convert some sections of Indian society to Christianity. At the heart of this complex and sophisticated operation is a simple strategy-convert locals and then give them the know-how and money to plant their own churches and multiply.Around the time that Bush Jr moved into the Oval office, a worldwide conversion movement, funded and effected by American evangelical groups, was peaking in India. The movement, which began as AD2000 & Beyond and later morphed into Joshua Project I and Joshua Project II, was designed to be a sledgehammer-a breathtaking, decade-long steamroller of a campaign that would set the stage for a systematic, sophisticated and self-sustaining “harvest” of the “unreached people groups” in India in the 21st century. It was just as the operation was taking off that the script changed. Much to the delight of American evangelicals, one of their own, George Bush Jr, became the occupant of the White House.In a major policy decision taken very early into his presidency, Bush, on January 29, 2001, unveiled a “faith based” social service initiative that included a new White House office to promote government aid to churches and Christian faith-based organisations. This, in effect, threw the massive weight of the federal government behind religious groups and religious conversions. The Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives was set up in the White House in the first week of February 2002 and a man called Jim Towey was appointed director. (A snap introduction to Towey: he was the legal counsel to Mother Teresa in the late 1980s.)Though Bush’s initiative to fund “salvation and religious conversion” is stalled in the Congress over constitutional and civil rights concerns, he has pushed for its implementation through executive orders.White House-Christian Coalition nexusThe American press is replete with reports on Bush’s largesse to faith-based organisations. They say it’s his “return gift” to the Christian Right for having loyally supported his presidential campaign. The Christian Coalition, founded by American TV evangelist and head of the multi-billion Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), Pat Robertson, played a crucial role in the 2000 election. Recently, in his TV programme, Club 700, broadcast on CBN, Robertson created a stir by announcing that he is confident Bush will win the 2004 election in a “blowout” because God has told him so.Indeed, Bush is keen to retain what we call the votebank and Americans ‘the base’. After all, the Far Right Christian evangelists have also been the most loyal backers of his hardline militarism in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.But there is another, perhaps more important, reason why Bush is keen on supporting his evangelist friends who run huge transnational missionary organisations (TMOs). In the decade 1990-2000 they ran a global intelligence operation so complex and sophisticated that its scale and implications are no less than staggering. This operation has put in place a system which enables the US government to access any ethnographic information on any location virtually at the click of the mouse. This network in India, established with funding and strategic assistance from US-based TMOs, gives US intelligence agencies virtually real time access to every nook and corner of the country. (See ‘List of TMOs Active in India’)Since Bush’s ascendancy to the presidency this network of networks has multiplied rapidly in India. Bush supports conversion in India because he supports those American TMOs who fund and strategise conversion activities in this country. Organisations like the International Mission Board, Southern Baptist Convention, Christian Aid, World Vision, Seventh Day Adventist Church and multi-billion enterprises run by evangelists like Pat Robertson, Billy Graham and Roger Houtsma, amongst many others, were instrumental in running a coordinated conversion campaign in India under the banner of AD2000. These later became the Joshua Project and when the decade-long movement officially closed down in March 2001, Joshua Project II was launched to sustain conversions and intelligence-gathering. Graham’s TMO, Billy Graham Evangelist Association, supports conversion activities in Gurgaon, Haryana, and Kolkata.When AD2000 was conceived for India, the plan was based on a military model with the intent to invade, occupy, control, or subjugate its population. It was based on solid intelligence emanating from the ground and well-researched information on various facets of selected people groups. The idea was to send out spying missions to source micro details on religion and culture. The social and economic divisions in the various Indian communities were closely examined. Given the oppressive and institutionalised caste system in the Hindu society, American evangelical strategists chalked out plans for reaching these various “unmixable” caste groups. The many faultlines running through the country-divisions in terms of ethnicity, caste, creed, language and class-were all factored in during the generation of ethnographic data.North India was designated the core target of American evangelists. It was described as the “core of the core of the core” of a worldwide evangelical movement conceived by fundamentalist American missionaries. This movement that took shape over the 1990s, has now taken off because of a unique collaboration between the American government and US-based evangelical mission agencies. In the 1990s this movement was shaped by the World Evangelical Fellowship (an international alliance of national evangelical alliances), working with the AD2000 movement. It brought together a wide variety of individuals and organisations, under the single goal of achieving “a church for every people and the gospel for every person by the year 2000.” Its focus was missionary mobilisation and church planting in India and other regions of the world where the Christian population was negligible. This movement was also a massive intelligence gathering exercise funded and supported by American missionary organisations that were responsible for the election of George W Bush.Global evangelism plansAD2000 first attracted attention at a convention of international evangelical missions called Lausanne II in Manila in 1989. The movement then spread rapidly around the globe to help catalyse evangelism. The strategy behind the movement was to establish pioneering global partnerships to eventually provide a church within every “unreached people group”. Ralph Winter, founder of the US Center for World Mission, characterised the movement as “the largest, most pervasive global evangelical network ever to exist.”This movement, spearheaded by Luis Bush from the movement’s headquarters in Colorado Springs, US, was planned for large conversion of people living within the “10/40 Window”. Incidentally, Billy Graham, a Christian fundamentalist and rabid evangelist, who was responsible for George W’s “born again” Christian status and whom the president considers as his godfather was the honorary co-chairman of the AD 2000 movement.The 10/40 window is the rectangular area comprising parts of North Africa and large parts of Asia between 10 degrees north and 40 degrees north latitude where 95 percent of the world’s “least evangelised poor are found.” AD 2000 movement mobilised and funded evangelical operations in India. Further, they sponsored the May 17-25, 1995, Global Consultation on World Evangelization (GCOWE) in Seoul, South Korea, where nearly 4,000 Christian leaders from 186 countries, including India, gathered to draw up secret and covert evangelical plans. Many American evangelists now describe GCOWE, Seoul, as “the most strategic Christian gathering in history.” That year also saw the transformation of the movement to a higher plane in the name of Joshua Project.The first GCOWE consultation was held in Singapore in 1989. The first five years of the decade (1990-2000) were the years of seeding the clouds with the vision of a church for every people and the gospel for every person by the year 2000. This involved the building of a new kind of partnering relationships, a grassroots networking structure…a “network of networks.”While AD2000 spied out the land and its inhabitants to get an accurate picture of opportunities and challenges for conversion activities in India, they also framed subversive strategies to implement their plans. Concepts like PLUG, PREM and NICE were conceived. PLUG refers to the target group-people in every language, urban centre and geographic division. PREM refers to the techniques to use-prayer, research, evangelisation and mobilisation. NICE refers to how the work is to be done-networking, taking initiative, and using an evangelist to spur existing groups and cohorts in their efforts to convert people to Christianity.Local networksFor Indian evangelical groups, access to American technology meant faster and more secure communication with their patrons. And, of course, the availability of the Bible in local languages, In fact, in today’s India, the Bible is available in almost all languages and dialects. If the translation of the Bible was a symbol of huge transnational exercise, the massive distribution of gospel literature was nothing less than a distribution marvel. In India, a coordinated gospel literature distribution exercise was staged to reach 600,000 villages by the end of 2000. Finally, American evangelical organisations that also run cash-rich television channels pumped in money to buy slots on Indian television networks. In fact, Pat Robertson, who recently stepped down as the chairman of the Christian Coalition and the owner of the CBN set up a studio in Hyderabad to help Indian evangelicals minister through television programmes. These programmes are broadcast on various networks in India where CBN buys time.The Joshua Project, started by a splinter group of CBN, was also a large-scale intelligence operation that brought together American strategists, theologists, missionary specialists, demographers, technologists, sociologists, anthropologists and researchers to create the most comprehensive people group profiles in the 10/40 Window. In fact, the ethno-linguistic profiling of the people groups in India, probably, cannot even be matched by data with the government of India. The logic behind this massive intelligence gathering operation was to “make a priority of establishing as a minimum, a pioneer church-planting movement within every ethno-linguistic people of over 10,000 individuals by December 31, 2000.”The launch of the Joshua Project in the mid-1990s resulted in scores of American research teams arriving in India to lay preliminary roadmaps for the church-planting mission. Everyone came on tourist visas and, on their arrival in India, their respective mission partners took them in. This partnership with Indian researchers resulted in the production of enormous field data on various people groups in the country. This, in turn, led to the identification of areas and regions where evangelical activities could be carried out in a focused and methodical manner.Joshua Project II is a continuation and expansion of the original plan. Its professed aim is to “highlight all the least-reached peoples (non-Christian) of the world and to help build ministry networks and partnerships focusing on these people.” The constant research and updating of ethnographic data from India should ring alarm bells within the intelligence agencies in India. In fact, the project maintains its “peoples lists” in cooperation with the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. The Southern Baptists, as will be seen later, have traditionally worked hand-in-glove with the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). India’s ethno-cultural data collected by the project is categorised by them as ‘Security Level 2’ because there is a danger to Indian and foreign missionaries if data relating to their conversion activities is made public.The main target: IndiaAs part of AD2000, Christian organisations in most countries, including India, had an embarked on an ambitious National AD2000 Initiative. In India the Evangelical Fellowship of India was central to the fulfillment of the goals set by this initiative. According to the founders of AD2000 (and that includes Bush’s pal Billy Graham) north India is the ‘kairos’, the key. India is where the era of modern missionary effort began nearly 200 years ago with the arrival of William Carey, the father of modern evangelical missions. However, the nine north and central Indian states of Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana were considered areas of immense strategic importance for the following reasons:The Gangetic belt is one of the most heavily populated regions of the world. Forty percent of the Indian population lives here;New Delhi is the capital and centre of political power in India;It is the most socially deprived area of India (the Hindi belt has a literacy rate of 30 percent, infant mortality is double the national average and the government of India officially designates four of these states as BIMARU (sick));This area of India is known as the heartland of Hinduism, a religion that boasts of some 33 million gods; and It has the smallest Christian presence in all of India. According to the 1991 census, the Christian population of North India is 0.5 percent of the total population.Clearly, north India was strategically important for the missionaries. What made things easier for them was the new buoyancy in India-US relations. Therefore, it was open to researchers and their research plans. Billy Graham and his ilk openly admit that they dispatched spying missions to India. “Just as Joshua sent out the spies to survey the land and report on its condition before the children of Israel moved out in obedience to God’s command, many more missionaries and Christian workers are finding research information invaluable in laying their plans,” say the AD2000 and Beyond Movement documents. Over the past eight years, tremendous energies and resources have been spent on spying out the land and its inhabitants.The India Missions Association (IMA) in partnership with Gospel for Asia, another big American missionary outfit, researched and published very informative and accurate books that unraveled the intricate mosaic that is India. Some of those books are in Tehelka’s possession. One of the big achievements of the Chennai-based IMA was conducting a detailed India-wide PIN code survey. India’s postal service is one of the world’s largest and it is important to understand why American mission agencies picked on India’s postal system to devise their covert conversion strategy. The Indian postal system has a network of 1,52,786 post offices-89 percent of them in villages, which means one post office for 23.12 sq. km of rural land and one for every 3.16 sq. km of urban stretch, or one for a village with 4,612 people or one for 12,924 people in a town or city.PIN-code theoryThe 6-digit PIN code introduced in August 1972, identifies and locates every departmental delivery office. The first digit represents the zone, the second the sub-zone, the third digit shows the postal sorting district, the fourth digit indicates the mail route and the last two digits indicate the specific post office of destination in that zone. For this purpose the country has been divided into eight zones and each region in each zone has been assigned a particular postal circle in the first two digits of a PIN code. The Delhi circle, for instance, is 11. The digits 45 to 49 represent the Madhya Pradesh circle and 60 to 64 are for the Tamil Nadu circle.This neat division of India through the postal codes is seen as a boon for strategising missionary work, coding the data emerging from the field and flowing it back to missionaries on the job. Given below are a few way in which pincodes have helped evangelical work:There is no easier way of locating workers than attaching pincodes to them Media contacts can be linked easily with workers Sorting “harvest forces” and mailing lists is easyThe codes make distribution of gospel literature faster and easier Urban areas have more postal codes than rural areas. This helps in planning effectively to plant churches in each area.To really come to grips with the implications of IMA’s PIN-code theory one has to understand the ‘Joshua Project II Data Background’. The report of the Joshua Project II is self-explanatory: “Joshua Project II provides a “blue-print” of the unfinished task of world evangelisation. It came out of the process of the AD2000 and Beyond Movement focusing on a list of approximately 2000 people groups that most need a church planting movement. The peoples listed here are over 10,000 in population and less than two percent Evangelical and less than five percent Christian adherent. Data has been compiled from many sources including: Southern Baptist Convention, Operation World, Adopt-A-People Clearinghouse, US Center for World Mission and the AD2000 movement.“The mission of Joshua Project II is to highlight the peoples of the world who have the least exposure to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Joshua Project II seeks to accomplish this through information sharing and networking… the mission of the Joshua Project is threefold.First, to gather, manage and distribute strategic population, progress indicator and ministry activity information to maximise the visibility of the least-reached peoples to the Church. The goal is a comprehensive, accurate, validated, public ally available list of all the ethno-cultural people groups of the world.Second, to be a least-reached peoples networking resource to the Christian mission community.Third, to enhance the flow of information between Great Commission organisations by using standardised data coding.”In India’s case this “standardised data coding” has been married to IMA’s survey. This has been used to such a degree that even the diverse language groups of India have been divided into PIN codes. The ability to send evangelists that are familiar to language and culture greatly facilitates the speed at which conversion can happen. It is also cost effective since tactics can be formed at home base. This also enables any Christian missionary organisation anywhere in the world to source any ethno-cultural or ethno-linguistic data on India at the click of the mouse. So let’s say if one of Bush’s Christian evangelical cronies wants to check out which missionary organisation is working with the Banjaras in Nalgonda, Khammam and Krishna districts in Andhra Pradesh, all he has to do is plug into this highly guarded database. It will tell him how many Banjaras were converted to Christianity over a specified period, the names of Indian Christian researchers working in community and which evangelical ministry coordinating the exercise of “saving souls”. Just about any detail he wants is available on demand. Obviously, it flows the other way as well. So assuming that somebody at the CIA headquarters wants information on a particular district or region all that needs to be done is to call up Bush’s mentor Rev Billy Graham. Graham will in turn log into databases maintained by a network of American Evangelical Missions. All this can happen in seconds and this is how technology has made evangelical activities so potentially dangerous.Laptop evangelistsLatest cutting-edge web technologies are used to keep in touch with various “unreached people groups” through key local interlocutors. They also track on a regular basis status indicators like number of evangelists working within a people group, the number of Christian adherents, church growth and mission agency progress indicators. All this information is then used to “promote networking and partnerships focusing on least-reached peoples in order to promote the flow of strategic ministry activity information between individuals, churches, denominations and mission agencies.Tehelka’s undercover operation managed to set up networking contacts with the Joshua II project. Evidence of the meticulous nature of this data is available with Tehelka. The amazing network that has been established can be illustrated with the following anecdote. B Shreeprakash and B Jayaprakash from Kayamkulam, Kerala, came across the December 1998 issue of the National Missionary Intelligencer published by The National Missionary Society of India, Royappettah, Chennai, while waiting for an appointment with a doctor. That sparked off an amateur investigation exercise, the contents of which were put down in their report titled ‘Conversions in India’. Here’s an extract:“As part of this work, an address namely, ‘Workers Together’ in US was contacted. To my surprise, a pastor of the Brethren Church, contacted me from my own town, his residence was only 1km away from that of mine. He called me over telephone and invited me for a personal meeting. On visiting his house, he handed over to me an oxford Edition of the Bible, printed in New York, and a few booklets and pamphlets. What astonished me was, that the pastor had with him, a copy of letter which I had sent to US. On enquiring about how the nearness of my residence with that of the Pastor was understood by the party at Bangalore, he showed me an official directory of the list of the evangelicals working in India, with their family photographs and complete details arranged in order of PIN codes. Another directory of their worldwide network was also shown to me.”There cannot, perhaps, be a better example to understand the effects of marrying the IMA’s survey with Joshua Project’s database. The message is this-an American missionary agency will go to any length even if it means converting just one person. A letter written to an agency in the US is re-directed immediately to Bangalore and the agency in Bangalore in turn tracks down the nearest evangelist and directs him to take upon the task of ministering the gospel to the newest seeker. In fact, the mission goal of IMA, according to its general secretary, Ebenezer Sunder Raj, is: “We need a church within cycling distance, then within walking distance and finally within hearing distance.” The Church growth figures that are with Tehelka clearly indicate that this mission mandate is on in full swing.Data on India: the CIA connectionThe “spying out” missions that generated the vast ethnographic data of the Indian people also involved detailed study of Dr KS Singh’s ‘People of India Project’ that was launched in 1985 by the Anthropological Society of India (ASI). Under Singh’s leadership, the ASI undertook an ambitious project to chart one of the most far-reaching ethnographic studies in the 20th century. Five hundred scholars spent over 26,000 field days to compile information for these volumes. This gigantic research work came handy for American and Indian strategists to draft their evangelical plans for India. According to Luis Bush, “Never before has this kind of information on India been so carefully surveyed, prepared, well published and distributed…We do not believe it is accidental. God is allowing us to “spy out the land” that we might go in and claim both it and its inhabitants for Him.”The data collected by experts from Wycliffe/Summer Institute of Linguistics, World Vision (WV) and the International Mission Board/Southern Baptists to compile the Joshua Project Peoples list included a detailed and comprehensive list of the people groups in India as well. Though this may appear normal international research activity – generating ethnographic profiles of non-Christian people groups in the 10/40 window – there are unseen dangers inherent in the compilation of such accurate people-group profiles.The CIA has publicly admitted to having used Wycliffe/SIL and the Southern Baptists for covert intelligence operations in many parts of the world. The cosy relationship between the Wycliffe and CIA is documented exhaustively in a book Thy Will Be Done written in the 1990s by Gerald Colby and Charlotte Dennett. The book documents joint CIA-Wycliffe missions to source anthropological data from Latin America. Here’s a quote from the book: “SIL had helped gather anthropological information on the Tarascan Indians that ended up in Nelson Rockefeller’s intelligence files. The files contained cross-references to reveal behavioural patterns among Indian peoples in everything from socialisation (including aggressive tendencies) and personality traits, drives, emotions, and language structure, to political intrigue, kinship ties, traditional authority, mineral resources, exploitation, and labor relations. Rockefeller called these data the Strategic Index of Latin America.” The question that will rattle not only the Indian government, but also outrage the Indian citizens is whether the American-funded “spying missions” carried out by Indian and foreign missionary agencies through more than a decade has resulted in the preparation of a ‘Strategic Index of India’ at the CIA headquarters?Wycliffe, the Southern Baptists and World Vision have all been active in India as well. Could it be mere coincidence that Southern Baptists who are amongst President Bush’s most loyal supporters, played an active role in the “spying out” missions? In fact, Colby and Dennett’s book features a missionary of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, William Carlsen, who admits that he gave an eight-hour briefing to the CIA on Thailand’s tribal areas. In the mid-1970s when the CIA’s penetration of American missionary agencies made international headlines, the agency passed a self-limiting executive order to refrain from using foreign missionaries for intelligence gathering operations. Incidentally, it was George Bush Sr who in his first action as the new CIA director declared on February 11, 1976, that he would ban the practice of enlisting “clergymen and newsmen as intelligence agents.” But this was just public grandstanding, doublespeak to save the CIA not only from embarrassment, but protect its operations in Latin American countries such as Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. As soon as this announcement was made the CIA granted itself a private waiver. This was confirmed in April 1996 when the then CIA director, John Deutch, testifying before a Senate intelligence committee, said that the agency could waive the ban in cases “unique and special threats to national security.”Faith-based policies of White HouseSurprisingly, Bush’s supporters like the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), made laborious protests then to condemn the collaboration between missionaries and the intelligence agency. “Any foreigner living in a foreign culture already comes under a natural suspicion. If this policy is reversed, it would totally erode the ministry of missionaries,” said Jerry Rankin, the then president of the Southern Baptist Convention Foreign Mission Board. In effect, this amounted to a plea to the CIA to keep their most well publicized (and hardly noticed) secret guarded!! The very fact that CIA has been courting religious missionaries in India and elsewhere is testimony to the fact that US funded evangelical missions have an unparalleled reach to the remotest corners of the country. Christianity Today in its issue of April 29, 1996, carried the following comment by the NAE President Don Argue: “For intelligence agencies to seek any relationship whatsoever with our religious workers must be unequivocally prohibited.”Yet, as recently as January 15, on a visit to the Union Bethel AME Church in New Orleans (this is a predominantly African-American congregation) Bush touted his faith-based initiatives. These initiatives are designed to break the constitutional sanctity of the separation of the State and the Church. Bush is desperate to entangle and enmesh faith-based organization as providers of various services. The Americans United For Separation of Church and State and some other inter-faith organisations have challenged the Bush plan for religious conversions. Americans United, founded in 1947, is a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, DC. But, the Bush administration has relentlessly pushed its religious agenda. It has now become inextricably linked with not only its social services policies domestically, but also with US foreign policy and the disbursal of aid to US-based TMOs. “President Bush shows little appreciation or understanding of the separation of church and state. Bush is closely aligned with ultra-conservative Christian groups that have opposed church-state separation for years. It is obvious they have great influence over his domestic and foreign policy agendas,” Rob Boston, assistant director of communications, Americans United, told Tehelka.These TMOs, themselves have been instrumental in influencing the faith-based policies of the Bush administration in the first place. Therefore, they in turn, by virtue of being Bush loyalists have carried the ‘Bush Religious Agenda’ to other countries, including India. While within the US this agenda “strikes at the heart of the religious freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment” of the US constitution, in the rest of the world, specially, India, it has vitally subverted its security and integrity. “The Religious Right organisations and fundamentalist Protestants groups have way too much influence over the Bush administration. Sadly, many Americans do not follow foreign policy decisions (with the exception of the war in Iraq) and are either not aware of what is happening or, more often, simply do not care. As a result, we are on the verge of dismantling the wall of separation of church and state in America-a policy that, if enacted, is bound to have negative repercussions around the world as fundamentalist interpretations of Christianity increasingly become the basis for foreign policy,” said Boston.Crusade in IndiaIndia is key to the Bush religious agenda. His government has given grants to Christian charities that are involved in conversion activities in India. On October 3, 2002, the US department of health and human services announced that television evangelist, Pat Robertson’s charity, Operation Blessing, would be given demonstration grants through the so-called Compassion Capital Fund. Robertson’s organisation and the other “intermediaries” were free to distribute this federal grant (essentially American tax payers’ money) to religious groups and community groups of their choice to provide social services. In other words, there was no restriction on how the federal grants were to be used. In an interview to Newsweek three years ago Robertson said, “I’ve got 10 good years left,” and “my heart is on missions, and on getting people into the kingdom of God. That’s the main thrust of my life.” In the same interview, Robertson recalled fondly a recent crusade in India: “I spoke to a crowd of 500,000 people!” he said. “Eighty-two acres of people! The response was overwhelming.” Robertson’s Operation Blessing is very active in India through CBN India headquartered at Jubilee Hills in Hyderabad.Incidentally, Robertson deftly defrauded the Indian government because Indian laws do not permit issuance of visas to Christian missionaries. In response to an unstirred question (NO. 969) in the Lok Sabha on February 27, 2001 the minister of state for home , Vidyasagar Rao, responded that “no new missionaries are allowed after 1984. However, short term visas are being issued to the foreigners who are coming only in administrative capacity, to review working of their organisations etc.” Certainly, Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition in the US and head of the multi-million Christian Broadcasting Network, might have had “administrative” reasons to travel to India. But he, surely, did not have either the permission or the right to evangelise.The Indian government has been caught napping. Rev Bush, head of a decade-long global evangelisation programme, visited India in January 2003. He was a guest of the Evangelical Fellowship of India and presumably traveled to India on a tourist visa. In the early years of 2000, many evangelists entered India fraudulently. Amongst them were extremist Christians like Don Noble, president of Maranatha Volunteers International affiliated to a fundamentalist Christian group, the Seventh Day Adventists and Pastor Michael Ryan, director of Global Mission, the Seventh Day Adventist church’s international outreach department which co-ordinates India evangelistic initiative. The US state department website makes no bones about the fact that American evangelists enter India by employing fraudulent means.In the context of the fact that Robertson is one of America’s most rabid Christian fundamentalists, Bush’s largesse to him certainly has implications for India. In an interview broadcast on his own TV channel this is what Robertson had to say on one of the religions followed in India: “Hinduism and many of the occult activities that come out of the Orient are inspired by demons and demon worship…There’s this concept that all religions are the same and all are good. That is not true. The worship of the Devil is not good.” Robertson’s friend and fellow evangelist, Jerry Falwell, also a TV preacher, ignited anti-American violence across many countries in November 2002 when he called the Prophet Mohammad a “terrorist” on American television. In Jammu and Kashmir, Falwell’s emarks were published in local newspaper. As word spread protestors spilled out into the street pelting stones and shouting anti-American slogans.The Oval Office centreAccording to Americans United, “Robertson’s Operation Blessing, a $66 million-a-year agency, also has a controversial history…The controversy over Operation Blessing stretches back to 1994, when Robertson used his ‘700 Club’ daily cable television programme to raise funds for the charity. Robertson told viewers Operation Blessing was using cargo planes to aid refugees from Rwanda who had fled into the neighbouring nation of Zaire (now known as Congo) to escape a violent civil war…In fact, Robertson was using his planes to haul mining equipment in and out of Zaire for African Development Corporation, his for-profit diamond mining company.”Incidentally, Robertson sought the Republican nomination for president in 1988 and later founded the Christian Coalition, a political group that has worked tirelessly to elect Republicans to public offices nationwide. Bush’s presidential election victory has been, by far, the coalition’s biggest success till date. After having installed a Christian fundamentalist as the President of America, Robertson stepped down as the president of the Christian Coalition in December 2001. The Washington Post, in a dispatch on December 24, 2001 noted that the religious right had found its “center in Oval office”. The writer of this dispatch, Diana Milbank wrote, “A procession of religious leaders who have met with him testify to his faith, while Websites encourage people to fast and pray for the president.”For American evangelicals, Bush is “God’s man at this hour”. The Bush administration’s faith based initiatives-‘charitable choice’ as it is often calle-was one of his key campaign planks during the 2000 presidential campaign. In fact, as Texas governor, Bush had become a fervent advocate of this policy that enabled Christian religious organisations to evangelise while providing publicly financed service.As president, Bush has expanded the ‘charitable choice’ approach to virtually all aspects of government aid-national and foreign. “In every instance when my administration sees a responsibility to help people, we will look first to faith-based institutions, to charities and to community groups that have shown their ability to save and change lives,” Bush told a rally in Indianapolis on July 22, 1999. Evangelists all over the world were and still continue to be happy with the language used by Bush, full of Biblical references and metaphors, as it is. “Saving Souls” is a common and often-used expression by evangelists all over the world to refer to religious conversion.Exploiting the AIDS victimsOn September 21, 2000, Bush wrote in USA Today that he would allocate $80 billion over 10 years in tax incentives to help churches (in America) provide social services. The US government has established an unparalleled partnership with Christian religious organisations. In the last week of September 2003, the US administration announced new rules enabling Christian religious institutions to access $20 billion worth of federal grants. Faith-based organisations can access and use this fund to deliver services from drug/alcohol de-addiction to prison reform to HIV/AIDS related care and support activities. The idea, of course, is to give opportunities to those who suffer to be “reborn”, just as Bush was after years of alcohol addiction.Even though the Bush administration has denied that its initiatives support evangelical activities, the fact is that faith-based organisation use prayer and proselytising as an integral part of its provision of social services. After all, Bush has often cited his own “reborn” status to justify the interventions of faith based organisation in the social sector. In his autobiography, A Charge To Keep, itself a twist on a well-known hymn, Bush wrote that evangelist Billy Graham had “planted a mustard seed in my heart, and I started to change… It was the beginning of a new walk where I would recommit my heart to Jesus Christ.”Bush has repeatedly singled out and praised faith-based organisations whose core philosophy is conversion while dispensing social services. During last year’s State of the Union speech his invited guests were Tonja Myles of the ‘Set Free Indeed Program’ at Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Henry Lozano of Teen Challenge, California. Both programmes use religious conversion as treatment. Within the US, Bush’s praise for religious conversion programmes has raised concerns as well. Early into the Bush presidency, the United Methodist Church, the second-largest Protestant denomination in the US, made it plain that the president’s faith-based initiatives were essentially about conversion. In a press release on June 14, 2001, a representative of the Methodist Church, Rev. Eliezer Valentin Castanon, said: “No one can honestly believe that a program funded with tax dollars, which requires as a major component of treatment the acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, will not advance religion.”One faith-based programme that Bush goes gaga about is the prison-based InnerChange Freedom Initiative started by Charles Colson. Incidentally, Colson was one of the characters from the Watergate episode; he spent seven months in prison for obstructing justice in a one of the Watergate cases. “InnerChange is an intensive Bible-centered program, ostensibly open to inmates of all religious persuasions, but every month inmates are evaluated on whether they “demonstrate a belief in Jesus Christ,” wrote Robyn E Blumner, perspective columnist of the St Petersburg Times, on September 28, 2003. “Those inmates who fail to show the proper level of piety are removed and lose the special freedoms and privileges dangled before inmates as incentives to participate,” he added. Bush introduced InnerChange into the Texas prison system when he was governor. At present it operates in four states and the Bush government subsidises its conversion activities with the American tax-payers’ money.What underlies all this is that the Bush administration’s conservative evangelical worldview has proliferated to countries like India. Here the Church and Christian NGOs have been involved for a long time in the provision of voluntary social service. But churches and Christian NGOs in India and the trans-national (read American) faith-based NGOs who have a large presence in India have gleefully responded to the message emanating from the White House. Bush’s support for religious conversion has happened on the persuasive power of the dollar. It is safe to say that almost all evangelical organisations in India and non-Catholic churches and the Christian NGOs get their funding from their American patrons or from USAID. These groups, like CARE or World Vision tend to Christian social workers and consciously infuse Christian religiosity as part of the help they provide to socially and economically marginalised communities.Holistic development tacticsWorld Vision, the world’s largest Christian church mission agency, has traditionally been closely linked with successive American governments. The former US Ambassador for International Religious Freedoms, Dr Robert Seiple, was WV chief for 11 years till 1998 when he was picked by former president, Bill Clinton, to head the office of International Religious Freedoms. Around the period when Seiple was the president of WV, its vice-president from 1993 to 1998 was Andrew S. Natsios. He is now the administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). For more than 40 years, USAID has been the leading government agency providing economic and humanitarian assistance to developing countries.WV’s focus is children and community development. It is involved in more than 162 projects in 25 states. It projects its community development programmes as “holistic development”. This is implemented through Area Development Programmes (ADP). Each ADP works in an area that is contiguous geographically, economically or ethnically. These programmes provide access to clean drinking water, healthcare, education and setting up of income generating projects. But infused with such development works is the spiritual component-Bible classes.In India, WV projects itself as a “Christian relief and development agency with more than 40 years experience in working with the poorest of the poor in India without respect to race, region, religion, gender or caste.” However, Tehelka has in its possession US-based WV Inc.’s financial statement filed before the Internal Revenue Service, wherein, it is classified as a Church ministry. In any case, its mission statement is self-explanatory: “World Vision is an international partnership of Christians whose mission is to follow our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, in working with the poor and oppressed, to promote human transformation, seek justice and bear witness to the Good News of the Kingdom of God.”Though, WV, has consultative status with UNESCO and partnerships with UN agencies like UNICEF, WHO, UNHCR and ILO, the fact is that its financial records reveal that it has funded evangelical activities all over the world, including India. WV uses its international clout and its close links with the US government through USAID to network with governments and corporate entities in the developing world.WV has an ongoing channel of interaction with the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII); its 2003 financial report it states that “the Rural Development Department of the Government of Assam recognised WV India as a leading development agency in the state and has recommended that WV be the choice for receiving bilateral funds. The government has also sought WV’s assistance in creating a proposal for US$ 80 million for development work in the state.”The income and expenditure account for the year ended September 30, 2002 shows that its total income was Rs 95.5 crores, which included foreign contribution of Rs 87.8 crores. For an organisation that claims to be only involved in development and relief work, it is quite stealthy about its positioning and exact nature of activities. When approached by Tehelka as part of its undercover operation for an interview, WV India’s national director, Dr Jayakumar Christian, after having agreed to the interview backed out because he wanted copies of the fictitious Christian magazine that Tehelka claimed to be representing.However, what goes unnoticed by the governments and the corporate world is WV India’s evangelical missions as part of its development agenda. Proselytisation is an integral part of its provision of development services under its much-touted ADP programmes. Though none of the literature published by WV India even mentions its evangelisation missions, foreign publications of WV India proudly proclaim its “spiritual” component.Take for instance, WV New Zealand’s report (4 September 2002) on the funding of ADP in Dahod, Gujarat. Under the head, ‘spiritual development’ the report states: “Held a vacation Bible school for 150 children from different villages. The children participated in games, Bible quizzes, drama and other activities. Organised a one-day spiritual retreat for 40 young people and a children’s Christmas party. Each of Dahod’s 45 villages chose five needy children to attend the party.” In Dumaria, Banka district, eastern Bihar, “the ADP supports local churches by running leadership-training courses for pastors and church leaders.”What has an ADP got to do with running leadership-training courses for pastors and church leaders? Incidentally, WV New Zealand funds ADP programmes in the tribal pockets of India. The New Zealand Government’s Voluntary Agencies Support Scheme (VASS) jointly fund the two-year project, the NZ government matching WV contributions on a 2:1 basis. There are many other instances of evangelical programmes run by WV India.In the Gajapati ADP, situated in Gumma Block of Orissa’s Gajapati district, a WV report admits that “Canadian missionaries have worked in the area for just over 50 years and today 85-90 percent of the community is Christian. However, local church leaders had little understanding of the importance of their role in community development. ADP staff build relationships with these leaders to improve church co-operation and participation in development initiatives.” Here WV organised two training camps for local church leaders in holistic development.Targeting the tribalsIn Mayurbhanj, again in Orissa, WV regularly organises spiritual development programmes as part of its ADP package. The WV report says: “Opposition to Christian workers and organisations flares up occasionally in this area, generally from those with vested interests in tribal people remaining illiterate and powerless. WV supports local churches by organising leadership courses for pastors and church leaders.”WV India is active in Bhil tribal areas and openly admits its evangelical intentions: “The Bhil people worship ancestral spirits but also celebrate all the Hindu festivals. Their superstitions about evil spirits make them suspicious of change, which hinders community development. ADP staff live among the Bhil people they work with, gaining the villagers’ trust and showing their Christian love for the people by their actions and commitment.”This being the case it is not suprising that WV India was honoured with the 2003 Mahatma Gandhi Award for Social Justice. This award is hosted by the All India Christian Council. Incidentally, Joseph D’Souza who was AICC’s President during that year also heads an evangelical network, Operation Mobilisation, in India. OM, again, is an American TMO. It was founded by Georg Verwer and today is a global ministry “committed to working in partnership with churches and other Christian organisations for the purpose of World mission.”Essentially, Bush has sparked off a theological fight between those Christian organisations who believe that their expression of faith is serving the marginalised, dispossessed and hungry in a non-sectarian way and the others who believe that the only way to bring change and reform is by Bible thumping. Unfortunately, the Bible thumpers are winning and they are being underwritten by the American tax payers.What they are probably not aware is that missionaries in India’s back of the beyond villages, like Karala, (see box) have been pulled into Bush’s missionary zeal. Sadly, while Pastor Prabhat Nayak is deeply committed to bring the villagers of Karala to Christ, he is unaware that Christian evangelical theology and money doled out by the White House threatens to rip apart the social fabric of India.The US administration headed by Bush is the most overtly religious in memory. Numerous press reports in America and Europe have highlighted instances where “cabinet meetings start with prayers and where no presidential speech is complete without some statement of Christian faith.” His foreign policy often seems rooted in biblical theology. The world has already seen Christianity vs Islam being played out in the war debate over Iraq. The Christian Right is solidly behind Bush’s Christianity First policy. Richard Land, a key leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, has strongly supported Bush’s faith-based foreign policy. By the way, Land, is a key member of US government’s Committee on International Religious Freedoms.The Southern Baptists fiercely believe in conversion. Not many would know that people like Land oversee the US International Religious Freedoms report. The 2003 report is a no-nonsense document that conveys the official US policy supporting evangelisation. It openly admits that “US officials have continued to engage state officials on the implementation and reversal of anti-conversion laws.” Here’s an excerpt from the report:“This act (Foreigners Act) strictly prohibits visitors who are in the country on tourist visas from engaging in religious preaching without first obtaining permission from the Ministry of Home Affairs. Given this context, the Government discourages foreign missionaries from entering the country and has a policy of expelling foreigners who perform missionary work without the correct visa…New missionaries currently enter as tourists on short-term visas. U.S. citizens accused of religious preaching while visiting India as tourists have faced difficulties obtaining permission to return to the country for up to a decade after the event.”Christian NGOs in IndiaThe Bush administration’s prescription of religiosity as social policy has gratified the religious Right in the US. The proponents of faith-based initiatives want US government funds to go to those churches and Christian NGOs that consider conversion as part of rehabilitation activities. Since the USAID funds Christian NGOs in India and also since US trans-national Chrisitian NGOs like World Vision and CARE are heavily involved in development initiatives in India, their role in evangelical activities is not a matter of conjecture.It is, of course, another matter that USAID plays a vital role in intelligence gathering operations for the CIA. President John F Kennedy had established USAID, along with the Peace Corps and the Alliance for Progress, “all three designed in part to stem the spread of communism.” The link between the CIA and Christian missionary groups is USAID. This is written in great detail in Thy Will Be Done. Here’s a quote again: “…That June, President Nixon’s director of (US) AID, John Hannah, had admitted publicly that AID had funded CIA operations in Laos, and subsequent revelations pointed to CIA-AID collaboration in Ecuador, Uruguay, Thailand and the Phillippines.” In fact, CIA-supported missionaries were embroiled in counter-insurgency operations, civil wars and were more often than not conduits for arms and armaments for Christian insurgent groups all over the world.Under President Bush’s fundamentalist Christian government, the era of CIA-USAID-Evangelicals partnership has come back with a roar. And a world caught up in “War on Terror” and the search for elusive weapons of mass destruction, has had no time to notice.In any case, aid dispensed by USAID was hardly meant to spur development. During the Cold War, it was meant to keep the former Soviet Union at bay and to keep afloat, bloated, venal and corrupt regimes all over the world.Including Saddam’s.In a research paper titled ‘Bush and Foreign Aid’, for the journal Foreign Affairs (September/October 2003), Steven Radelet, who was Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury from January 2000 to June 2002 and is now a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, wrote: “One of the greatest surprises of George W Bush’s presidency so far has been his call to dramatically increase U.S. foreign aid…(in September 2002) Bush released his National Security Strategy, which gave prominence to development and aid alongside defense and diplomacy. Then came his State of the Union address, in which he called for $10 billion in new funding ($ 15 billion total) over the next five years to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean.”Radelet went on to reveal that US foreign aid increase from $11 billion in 2002 to $18 billion in 2006 is the largest increase in decades. This from a Republican president whose party has traditionally demonstrated antagonism toward foreign aid. USAID’s change of fortune is nothing short of miraculous. In the 1990s it almost disappeared into oblivion because US assistance to poor countries declined by 25 percent. September 11 brought the issue of foreign aid back into limelight.Nothing can illustrate this better than the example of Sudan. This oil rich country has for years been caught in a debilitating and destructive civil war that has pitted a Muslim government centred in the north against the southern Christians. But the recent discovery of oil in Sudan has changed the dynamics of the conflict and, as luck would have it, the oil was struck in the Islamic, northern Sudan. So human rights groups and Christian missionary organisations have been crying themselves hoarse over the “brutal anti-Christian campaign of the Muslim government” and the “persecution of the non-Muslims.” In the same breath Christian fundamentalists like Rev Franklin Graham and Senator Sam Brownback have pressured Bush to assist the rebels. Pressure is also suddenly being mounted internationally and within the US for “diplomatic intervention” to “end the conflict and prevent a disastrous famine” in the country.And guess who is making the loudest noises about Sudan? Christian Solidarity International. It is working overtime to influence the US Congress and British parliament. Over the last decade, USAID has spent $1.2 billion, most of it to support the SPLA, the Christian rebel group in Southern Sudan. The CIA-USAID-Missionary partnership story in Sudan is completed when the last block of the jigsaw puzzle is put in place-Andrew S Natsios.Natsios was appointed administrator of USAID on May 1, 2001. But President Bush gave him two other hats to wear as well-special coordinator for international disaster assistance and special humanitarian coordinator for Sudan. Ostensibly, Bush wants to ensure that aid reaches the people of Sudan as opposed to being stolen and misappropriated by the Sudanese government.The fact that aid deliveries have for so long been stolen by the Christian rebel groups, of course, did not even merit a mention.Natsios has earlier served in USAID from 1989 to 1993 heading two of its vital departments. It’s a strange co-incidence that during the time when CIA backed American missionary agencies were receiving ethnographic data from “spying missions” set up by American evangelical organisations in India, Natsios was associated with World Vision, which, in turn, was involved in analysing the ethnographic data along with Wycliffe and the Southern Baptists.Post-9/11 strategyUnder the Bush Presidency, the post-9/11 period has been marked by two key initiatives: support to “frontline countries” that are helping US in its “war on terror” and appear committed to development and humanitarian issues like HIV/AIDS, poverty, and economic inequality. What is striking, however, is that the Bush administration, in its efforts to project US as a “soft power” as opposed to a marauding military superpower, has relied and been influenced disproportionately by faith-based groups andinstitutions.And given the fact that Bush administration officials regularly hold consultations with Church groups and leaders, it is not surprising that American evangelical missions have found a deep reservoir of support with the US government for their activities in India and elsewhere.