THE POWER OF NEWSPRINT

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2018/11/27/the-power-of-newsprint/

• Publishers appear to be unaware of this potent tool in their hands

Pakistan, with its poor literacy figures, needs to improve them by making a concerted “one, two, three…Pull!” effort, because literacy is important. Studies show that literacy impacts on population growth, its health and the mental state of individuals.

Education is one of the best things a person can possess, but there can be no formal education without literacy. So, while both are crucial, literacy is the more urgent of the two.

Teaching a person to read isn’t easy. In a positive development there is much more and better reading material available now than there was a few years ago: colourful, well-illustrated books for children using clearly written letters and words, and for adults, books with interesting but simple content to encourage a reading habit. The OUP (Oxford University Press) has made some great contributions in this context. But still, the most easily available reading material is a newspaper.

Hot roasted peanuts, channa choor, fabric, dishes… these and many other things are wrapped in newspapers in lieu of bags; newspapers are also a commonly used packing material in crates of fruit and are used in many other ways. This makes a newspaper the single most likely reading material to be freely available in even a poor, illiterate household.

Yet newspaper publishers appear to be unaware of this potent tool in their hands, and a glance at the average Urdu newspapers is enough to drive one to despair. Letters scrambling one on top of the other, interwoven with vines, squiggles, curlicues, and other elaborate decorative items… what a waste of a resource, and what an example of thoughtlessness.

There are government schools and colleges, but private educational facilities for the disadvantaged sector of society are more than a match for what the government provides. There are many Trusts, individuals and NGOs involved in the field and they are doing excellent work. No one can say that people are either unaware or negligent regarding the importance of literacy. But still, a lot of work needs to be done. The point about newspapers being crucial is worth considering.

Perhaps newspaper owners throughout the country could put their heads together and come up with a plan at very little cost to themselves?

The desperate situation we find ourselves in in this country calls for cunning measures. With the population where it is at present, few people are likely to have funds left over after housing and feeding the family to invest in books and school. People who can afford them buy books, but they generally don’t give these books away. Newspapers on the other hand are either thrown away or sold off. Which only means that a person with a newspaper will not mind giving away segments or even the entire paper to someone who needs it. So, even though newspapers may not be a conventional aid to literacy, nothing prevents them from being a creative and viable route towards achieving it. For adults looking to learn English, newspapers with news regarding everyday life may be more interesting than stories, because they deal with every individual’s day to day concerns. It might be more interesting to read about Imran Khan and his U-turns, about why the CJP imagines he should be allowed to dock people’s salaries for the purpose of making a dam, and about the Kartarpur corridor …than about how Surayya’s doll was both short and fat, and whatever else it was.

Perhaps newspaper owners throughout the country could put their heads together and come up with a plan at very little cost to themselves? Perhaps they could each devote a very small section of their newspaper for the use of people with poorer reading skills. This applies to English and Urdu papers both, but Urdu papers might also re-assess the font they use, and how to make it easier to read. A student trying to learn from an Urdu paper has started sticking a little symbol rather like a dangling earring under her words. When I asked her why she pointed to the daily Urdu newspaper lying beside her and said: It’s like this one, here.

She was right. It was there, everywhere, and it didn’t make any sense in the newspaper either.

EDUCATION - OF THE 'AZAAN BAJ RAHA HAI VARIETY'

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2018/11/19/education-of-the-azaan-baj-raha-hai-variety/

• U-turns all around?

The various convent schools dotted across the country used to produce what we were pleased to consider an elite; in the case of female students that meant women known for deportment and cheesecake, best described as ladies of the ‘azaan baj raha hai’ variety able to speak English better than their mother tongue.

Aitchison was even then in a class of its own, producing young men who looked impressive on horses; able to mount a horse on one side without falling off the other. They were also skilled with a polo stick.

Someone probably realised that the fledgling nation was hardly in crying need of such skills. A different set of skills were needed. So, a new batch of schools appeared and proliferated, the Beaconhouses, City Schools, LGS etal.

Like the schools mentioned above the education these newer schools provide is of an international standard. Most students enrolled here get through O and A levels and continue to higher studies at home or abroad.

All these schools however address the needs of just the few. The majority, as always, is ignored.

And still, those different set of skills needed by the fledgling nation are not to be seen.

The convents were not expensive, but it was hard to get admission in one unless you were related to someone who was someone. Aitchison was never affordable, and the newer schools are not affordable at all. None of these institutions provide what this country needs most: an equal opportunity for all its students. The deep, very deep chasm that runs through this society and pulls it apart remains, only now it is deeper than before.

Just as it is wrong to foster a minority that has very little in common with the majority, it is not the best idea to produce a set of young people with a great deal of academic but no life skills. In this country, members of the elite would generally not know what to do if a set of plyers were to fall into their hands. Not that a set of plyers would forget itself so far as to do that. And, of course, there’s always the lucky matter of mummy knowing of a very good plumber…

They do nothing around the house, and summer jobs are almost unheard of. Life starts at two in the afternoon and ends at four in the morning. Rather a waste of an education? That fact that Pakistan is a poor country, now also a malnourished one, skittered across their horizon at some stage, but then it disappeared because there are few reminders in such a pampered life. Even the beggars that come knocking at car doors are invisible because these children have phones in their hands. All things practical are learnt during higher studies overseas where this chasm does not exist, or at least not to such an extent. Because yes, that is the sad thing, that these children, educated lopsidedly as they may be, are, after all’s said and done, educated. And they leave the country taking that education with them.

The Supreme Court and the High Court of Sindh in their combined wisdom have suspended the registration of some schools because of their high fees which – annually – rises more than it is allowed to rise

But who, given a choice, would live in the same country as Khadim Hussain Rizvi, one of the many markers at which the government made a U-turn, today a move much touted by our PM, but more of that anon.

The government run schools in Pakistan are most of them abysmal. Graduates come away with no language skills – either mother tongue or that of strangers, and next to no understanding of geography, science, or much of anything else. Practical skills are learnt on the job.

The country needs more schools where students are taught life skills in addition to academics. One such school – there may be others – is the Chand Bagh School, in Muridke, about 40 km from Lahore. It is a residential school with a reasonable fee — which would still be out of reach of the common man, but the school itself provides some two hundred scholarships to address that problem. In addition to academics, students are taught plumbing, electrical skills, gardening, and even though they are boys… cooking. It is a laudable effort, and that is what we need.

The Supreme Court and the High Court of Sindh in their combined wisdom have suspended the registration of some schools because of their high fees which – annually – rises more than it is allowed to rise. Thousands of students across the country have been cast into a dilemma regarding their education. Clearly, official understanding of this issue is that one must shut down what is available instead of providing alternatives.

Of course, the suspension of registration will not last long because students belonging to these schools belong to rich families, the only currency that never dips in Pakistan – and someone or the other will use their clout to put things back on course. The courts will, in short, do a U-turn then, which according to our PM is the best example of leadership, or else we all stand in danger of being defeated, like Hitler or Napoleon.

Well, Hitler is beyond the pale, but Napoleon, despite his lack of U-turns, had several achievements which are best described in this passage by Wiki:

‘Napoleon’s influence on the modern world brought liberal reforms to the numerous territories that he conquered and controlled. He implemented fundamental liberal policies in France and throughout Western Europe. His Napoleonic Code has influenced the legal systems of more than 70 nations around the world. British historian Andrew Roberts states: “The ideas that underpin our modern world—meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances, and so on—were championed, consolidated, codified and geographically extended by Napoleon. To them he added a rational and efficient local administration, an end to rural banditry, the encouragement of science and the arts, the abolition of feudalism and the greatest codification of laws since the fall of the Roman Empire”.’

All this without a single U-turn. Tut. If the Supreme Court of Pakistan or the current government can achieve one tenth of this, particularly in the field of education, or any field really, I’ll eat my hat. I may not wear it, but I do possess one. I was after all once at CJM.

WHO'S THE 'THEY' THEY SPEAK OF?

this column was printed in the paper but was not published online.

Anyone following the trajectory of Imran Khan’s rise to prominence must wish, most arduously, that he’d settled back into a semi-private existence after retiring from cricket. He could have made occasional forays into the public eye to sign autographs and perhaps write a book or two instructing Botham and Lamb on how not to be racist, but that’s it. Instead he went on to build a Cancer Hospital. Fame is a heady experience.

The Shaukat Khanum University Hospital is a great achievement and has turned out to Imran Khan’s credit, a lifesaver for countless people who could otherwise not have afforded the care this hospital provides. But with SKUH the captain appears to have peaked, and thereafter ‘captain’ has been replaced by ‘Taliban Khan.’ Sadly, a great portion of his electorate was unable to get the charismatic captain out of their mind, and the man who refused to condemn the Taliban and insisted he would negotiate with them stood for elections, and with the support of these fans has been able to form a government in this country.

Pakistan can ill afford a man of Khan’s uninformed grasp of politics, beset as it is by itself and others. Mr. Khan thinks in terms of slogans and knee jerk reactions due to inattention to planning; he imagines the country can be run by such means, very much like the very people we most need to shake off. Such inept politics has managed to place the government on the back foot, more than at any other time. Had ‘they’ searched from this pitch to that, they would not have found as ideal a stooge to serve as front man.

It’s a moot point exactly who the ‘they’ are. The usual ‘they’ appear to have had little to say, when as Irfan Hussain points out in a major daily, they were on the blasting end recently. That is something that has never happened before. So who exactly benefits from the PMs random bouncers here, there and everywhere, and his predilection for all things right of centre?

Could it be that Pakistan has finally done what it has been trying to do since it came into being, and like the Americans given the country’s helm into the hands of someone who is holding the ship fully on course to the bottom of the sea? Will ‘they’ stand forth then, as Saviours and steer the nation towards…heaven knows what. Or is it that by allowing themselves to appear outdone ‘they’ are not actually outdone? That ‘their’ aims and the aims of Pakistan’s foul-mouthed Voldemort actual dovetail? It isn’t difficult to imagine where they converge and what one gains from the other’s success; the prospect is frightening, yet that is the most likely scenario. Because dharnas like the ones our PM set into fashion for his own ends, without a thought for the losses incurred by the nation, do not and cannot just occur. They take finances, and finances, in this country, are most of them in ‘their’ hands.

Have they overstepped their intentions though? Because since the latest three-day bout of savage violence up and down the country, the common man incurred so much loss as a result of shutdowns and road blockages that the narrative has changed with the suddenness of a game in which the team most cheered-on has been caught tampering with the ball. Or match fixing. Or threatening the umpire. Or whatever-ing in that vein. You wonder if Mr. Khan is aware that most of his die-hard fans who voted for him because “well, there is no one else after all!” or because “we need a change,” or because “he did a great job with the hospital, maybe he’ll do as well by the country,” or “lets see this ‘naya Pakistan’ he speaks of,” have since been eating their words as if there were no tomorrow. Very likely there isn’t, and if there is it won’t be pleasant.

See – and this is an important observation: nobody likes to finance their dreams themselves, and that too as brutally as people have had to do during the latest dharna, only to find that – lo and behold! Those dreams are still somewhere in the dim and uncertain future.

And also, because most people, uneducated and uninformed they may be, dislike the sort of language they heard from persons who claim to uphold the will of the Prophet (pbuh).

So, IK needs to be aware that as when a beautiful woman looks in the mirror and finds (gasp) a wrinkle on her nose, his charisma, based on much the same theme, has lost a great deal of the grip it possessed at the outset. You wonder if that is what ‘they’ wanted and he will now be cast aside as unnecessary, or was it all a big boo-boo in the general scheme of scheming? Who knows.

WILL THE REAL BLASPHEMY PLEASE STAND UP?

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2018/11/05/will-the-real-blasphemy-please-stand-up/

• What kind of government allows itself to be hamstrung and held hostage this way?

On 19 August 2014 Imran Khan was addressing a huge rally in Islamabad during the course of which he yelled — as he does — that the IMF and the World Bank should not give further loans to the then government of Pakistan. He threatened that if any loans were given they would be turned down. At another rally just before his party came into power he offered to do himself in if his government ever forgot itself so far as to seek such loans. Now, his government has done exactly that, and the gentleman continues amongst the living. You’d think experience would have taught him not to utter such words without thinking first. Obviously the words taste good, otherwise why make a habit of uttering them before turning around and eating them? But such forbearance takes foresight.

At his inauguration speech the PM made some very commendable remarks regarding the equality of all citizens, before appointing Atif Mian to the Economic Council a few days later. Very soon after he caved in to pressure — as he does — and took back the appointment because of Mian’s affiliation with a much persecuted group of citizens.

And there is Asia bibi. Most people breathed a sigh of relief when she left prison, and prayed that she and her family would leave the country as speedily as possible for their safety. The PMs most recent speech followed Asia Bibi’s acquittal. It was a firm speech, such as you can imagine a cricket captain delivering, saying that any member of his team caught ball tampering would be ousted from the team, end of story. He said no person could go against the writ of the State. If they did they would be dealt with sternly. Yet the bearded ones and their cohorts continued breaking, screaming, burning, beating, until the government went into a huddle with the rioters. As expected the PM did a U-Turn and ate his words. He’s getting adept at that.

So now we have Asia, a lady who spent many years in prison under a death sentence as a result of a questionable accusation from a questionable source, an accusation that was never proved. She was released from prison only to be placed on the exit control list. She is stuck in this country where she and her entire family are under imminent danger of being murdered by rabid sections of society. Whither firm moves?

A free citizen’s movements cannot be restricted without just cause, also by law. Asia and her family have not committed a crime so they cannot be placed on the ECL, by law

The group of persons implicated in the riots is the TLP a registered and recognised far right political party. The first mistake was of registering them. That was committed by the ECP. By negotiating with them not only has the PM gone back on his assurances but he has given such parties a boost, a power which tells then that if they break and burn and utter enough threats they can pretty much get whatever they want. Government, courts, laws, all be blowed.

What kind of government allows itself to be hamstrung and held hostage this way?

The government has caved in to the demands of a set of persons who has called for the murder of the Chief Justice of Pakistan among other violence.

Is the government aware that they have negotiated with a group of persons who have enough against them to place them in custody without further investigation, seeing that incitement to murder and violence is a crime, and is caught on video?

The government has also agreed to restart proceedings against Asia, when a verdict by the Supreme Court cannot be taken back to court by law.

A free citizen’s movements cannot be restricted without just cause, also by law. Asia and her family have not committed a crime so they cannot be placed on the ECL, by law.

One of the stated aims of the TLP is to confront and punish blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

So far, the only blasphemy has been committed by the TLP itself when it claims that its actions are sanctioned by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). He was a man who believed in forgiveness, education, persuasion and peace. Witness the name Islam. If all else failed the Prophet (PBUH) was asked to say, “To you is your way, to me is mine,” and carry on with life.

To see the country’s elected government hijacked by a party based on violence is bad enough. To see one’s most beloved Prophet’s injunctions so trampled upon is quite another matter. He taught us to use force for a rightful cause only if there was no other means of defense possible. All of this has been violated here.

This, that is being shoved under our noses, is a caricature of Islam. Which then is the actual blasphemy?