SAY GOODBYE TO 2020

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/11/28/say-goodbye-to-2020/

Just as a virus changes or mutates─ and we’re more familiar with the idea now than before, language changes as well. The words we use and the phrases that are popular from one generation to the next are shaped by various factors, and many of these words and phrases change or disappear depending on the times they flourish in, the people who use them and events that occur at various times.

Even legal terms can find themselves into common parlance like Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code which deals with ‘cheating and dishonesty,’ 420 has come to be known by the people of the subcontinent as another term for a fraud. It’s the same with 9-2-11 which is something similar and means ‘an absconder’.

With that in mind, the end of the year may be a good opportunity to guess what other changes are likely to take place in the language we speak. To start with there could be sentences like ‘it turned out to be a complete 2020’ which would refer to something during the course of which everything went wrong. Optometrists will need to come up with another description for perfect vision also, because 2020 has not been a year known for a good vision.

Stuff like ‘doing a u-turn worthy of IK,’ when a complete turnabout─ even in apparent matters of principle─ takes place, is now old hat and a bit tedious because it has lost its novelty. But there’s always the term ‘a puppet theatre deserving of Pakistan’ which well describes current affairs and which could be used in the future for anytime someone imagines he or she has a hand in matters when he or she does not, despite all Rafi Peer Theatre’s attempts to give puppet shows a positive cultural spin.

And then, for example, is anyone still happy to hear ‘you’ve come up trumps’ as a compliment if someone means you have completed something successfully and well? It’s very doubtful. Perhaps a Trump reference will become the same as a four letter word from now on, and its use will be restricted to ‘trumped-up charges’ or to refer to unsavoury matters, accusations, or other such things. There may be other usage, such as the next time we have elections and the previous leadership refuses to concede defeat, that will henceforth be referred to as ‘doing a trump.’ Really, that phrase could be used in a number of ways, when a tenant refuses to vacate a house, or when a person lays claims to success when the evidence points to quite the opposite. All of these are things occur all the time so it’s possible that a Trump legacy does exist.

For example, ‘playing a base trumpet’. Such a phrase would be ideal for times when someone says something really despicable. Such as our Special Assistant to the Prime Minister’s recent comment when she spoke of Nawaz Shareef ‘parceling’ his dead mother home from the UK to Pakistan. That was uncannily reminiscent of the POTUS interrupting Biden in their first debate to say “I don’t know Beau,” speaking of the now President’s dead son. That was base cruelty if anything, or ‘a base trumpet (ism).’

I know, one gets kind of stuck on that theme. So let’s break away from it. But wait, there’s one more. What will you say in future when a person is allowed to get off scot-free despite admitting to grave crimes? ‘Getting Pardoned with the turkey?’ Yep.

So closer to home, how about ‘doing an Isa’, what will that mean in future years? It is likely to be used for when someone does everything he or she is supposed to do but still cops plenty of unfair flack because e or she has courage and principles.

Or a thief ‘getting nabbed’… in future perhaps that will bring up feelings of anger instead of satisfaction because it would be understood that the thief who was nabbed was the wrong one, caught on purpose to allow all the actual ones to run away.

Of course the phrase that has the most impact will have to be ‘She’s a positive person.’

Watch everyone take cover and disperse.

God help us all get through 2020 to a better ‘21.

GENIE IN THE BOTTLE

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/11/21/genie-in-the-bottle-2/

To learn who rules over you simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize─Voltaire

If today’s world had to be defined by a single word, that word would be information. Information about places, people, things, ideas– past, present and future. And now, along with the right we have greater ability to meet people from around the word, to visit whichever place we can, use some things and adopt certain ideas– so now we need to know about them. When someone or some organisation prevents this readily available information from getting to people because they feel this information is ‘bad’– if they are right, then using their own arguments they might well be preventing those same people from seeing this ‘bad’ for themselves and reaching out and over to the good. In such a stultifying atmosphere there would be no progress. The world would simply be a horde of human-faced sheep following each other away from the baa-ad (excuse the pun).

In today’s world, even the so called democracies and ‘free’ societies are not free from the scourge of censorship. To speak of societies other than our own– since our own seems to elicit such a response– it was censorship and authoritarianism at its most pathetic when the ex-President Trump fired Chris Krebs, the election security official who contradicted him by setting up a website that debunked election misinformation. The interesting point is that by firing Krebs that misinformation did not go back under the carpet, the act of firing only called attention to it. That is what always happens.

Wired reports that Krebs’ website ‘has been rapidly checking and debunking all manner of conspiracy theories and misunderstandings and outright disinformation circulating online.’

For many Americans, the firing might have been the first time they even heard of either CISA or Krebs, and yet he might just be the lone figure to emerge from the (Trump) administration with a better reputation than when he entered it.’

To go back to an almost prototypical example for our country one must revisit Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses which may never have been read by more than a few people had the ultra-conservative element in society not made such a big hoo-ha about it. As it is, it was snuck into the country (where it was banned) in people’s suitcases and widely read. And yet the powers that be never fail to learn that they must not censor if only for this reason.

And so the Pakistan Ministry of Information and Technology which moves in strange ways its wonders to perform has come up with a set of rules that social media companies and internet providers have alike condemned and termed ‘draconian’.

These rules have been named the ‘Removal and Blocking of Unlawful Online Content’ and are supposed to be a subset of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016 (PECA).

If nothing else, such moves prove that those in charge of information and technology have much to learn about it.

One of the most outstanding features of information in this age which rides on the back of electronic media is that information is exactly like the proverbial genie that has been let out of its bottle – it cannot be put back again.  There are innumerable ways to get around any such attempt, and users can mask where they live, they can change their identity, they can hack sites– and in the end they will get the information they need. It only needs one person to achieve this and the others will have it before you can say ‘Stupid!’ We are now addicted to information. We cannot do without Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, Yahoo. We need them to tell us everything about the world around us, the weather, its monetary climate, its day-to-day occurrences; we need them to plan our travel, pay our bills, talk to our loved ones and view their faces.

And we need them to spread misinformation. How would Trump tell us he won the 2020 elections without Twitter? In the absence of the media, and then social media, how would we have known that Germany and Japan are neighbours and that they worked together to re-build the world after World War II? We would not have known either that Jesus was not mentioned in history books, not ever.

Yes, even misinformation helps us choose, to understand and to decide what to do next. But that is the problem, that this choice, understanding and attempts to decide, does not suit those who put out ‘officially approved’ information and depend on it.

AN ACUTE POVERTY OF MIND

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/11/14/an-acute-poverty-of-mind/

This newspaper recently published a report about how South Asia ranks highest in incidents of ‘child stunting,’ based on a study by Laura Hammond.

Another national daily reports that four out of ten children in Pakistan are ‘unlikely ever to meet their cognitive and developmental potential’, which is “44 percent nationally, the third highest in the world.”

An insufficient diet, which means an insufficiency of required nutrients can lead to ‘stunting,’ which leads to children failing to achieve normal growth, and can also lead to permanent damage to the brain. This insufficiency can occur while the child is still unborn if there is insufficient food for the family, including the mother, it can occur after a child is born when it is growing, or both. The study includes the Global Hunger Index (GHI) on which Pakistan ranks at 106 out of a total of 116 countries. That means in plain terms that in this country there is a horrific incidence of people not having enough to eat.

Covid-19 has only added itself to the long list of already existing diseases that prove much more dangerous to those who have an insufficient or improper dietary intake. An improper intake implies too much processed food, or food that is too high in salt, sugars or other undesirable ingredients.

A sufficient intake requires both an informed choice and the financial ability to obtain it. So it is a spiral: poverty leading to lack of education leading to an insufficient earning capacity– leading back to poverty which means an insufficient diet, and/ or one full of all the wrong things. On top of this is the unfair inflation of prices these days; a slippery slope that requires urgent attention. They keep saying they’ll do something about it, but ‘something’ has yet to be seen.

The country is poor, the government uninterested. Even if it were interested it lacks the scale of funds required. Private individuals donate a great deal to charity in Pakistan, but an even greater effort is needed.

A few years ago there was the case of Sakina, a poor peasant woman who was ill but could not afford medical care. The husband was too poor to afford basic food items. The family, which included two children, was starving. Sakina eventually ended her life by consuming pesticide. She is one of the many for whom death seems to be the most peaceful option.

Such cases take place all over the world, as in Syria where over 22 persons starved to death a few years ago, and in Yemen where millions were close to starvation in 2017.

But ever since covid-19 put in an appearance the situation has become even worse. Unless measures are taken, something like 12,000 people a day are likely to die of hunger around the world for reasons directly related to the current pandemic, Oxfam reports.

In Dadu a young labourer recently offered one of his sons for sale, because he had lost his job following the pandemic. As a result his wife, children and his parents were facing starvation.

In a large fishing community strung out on a series of islands off the coast of Thatta in Sindh, since covid-19 appeared on the scene, and the usual fish markets shut down, the already poverty-stricken lives of these fishermen suffered further. The community now faces starvation on a large scale.

Meantime Oxfam has warned that more people are likely to die of hunger caused by covid-19 than of the illness, and an incredible number have already died of the disease. Oxfam also mentions that women suffer even more since they are so often the target of discrimination.

After all this information which cannot really be news to most people, and it may come as a surprise that the main focus of this column is not hunger, or poverty or even stunting. It is in fact the exact opposite of all these things: repletion, riches and obesity, all of which were on display recently at a function to celebrate the marriage of two business families who clearly did not know what to do with their excessive wealth.

In the midst of the covid-19 pandemic, in the midst of a world suffering from disease, poverty and death two families saw fit to spend their money on rivers of food, flowers and rich clothing. An insane amount of money was spent on the function, apparently something like Rs 200 crore. The function broke not just religious injunctions (Allah loves not the wasters: al A’raf, 7:31) but also ignored safety measures, and managed to break all rules that limit the number of guests and number of dishes at such functions. There must be any number of well lubricated palms floating around the city at present that have little to do with Nivea or Oil of Ulay.

It seems not to have occurred to these families that the tailors and artisans who stitched their prohibitively expensive clothes, the men who set up their chairs and elaborate dais, the cooks who prepared their food and the waiters who served it came from families that were many of them close to the brink of starvation, who must have looked at the riches around them and questioned life itself.

The FBR, which moves in mysterious ways, asked the event managers and those who performed at the wedding to explain themselves following the wedding. Somewhat as an afterthought they have also, and very rightly so, questioned the two families involved.

Whether this questioning will result in any answers or simply some smirking individuals, we are still to discover. But several people one knows have decided to get their tiles from elsewhere, and have switched their grocery preference to other outlets.

What else could have been achieved with this money? How much food could it have bought for thousands of persons, for the fishermen of Thatta, for the young children of impoverished fathers? How many Sakinas could it have saved from killing themselves, how many children saved from hunger? How many persons could it have educated so they could support themselves and their families? How much heartache for how many millions─ and yet all it did was feed those who already eat too much. Such acute poverty of mind has to be as much a tragedy as any other.

SEPARATED AT BIRTH?

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/11/07/separated-at-birth-2/

• What makes the people and politics of the USA and Pakistan so similar?

US politics these last few years and very much so the past few days has been all too familiar for us in Pakistan: the violence, the riots, the killings, the police atrocities, irrational attitudes, and the racism. And now, the President’s baseless and unpleasant allegations of fraud (election results as of writing this have not yet been finalized). We in Pakistan are familiar with it all, familiar with the overstatements, with the partisanship, the lies and histrionics, as well as with leaders digging in their heels and refusing to leave. Having said which, Mr. Zardari’s exit after losing elections all those years ago was a notable exception for us, an unexpected performance, uncharacteristic and dignified. Mr. Trump could learn something from it. Perhaps Mr. Zardari should write a book: How to Leave Office for Dummies.

What makes the people and politics of the USA and Pakistan so similar? It is like discovering a twin separated at birth. We are after all two very disparate cultures with regards to religion, customs, history, political framework, with a great difference between our financial capacities. The USA is the 11th richest country in the world, according to its GDP, while Pakistan ranks at 138th. As for literacy, it seems the USA is about 99 percent literate with no disparity between male and female literacy, while Pakistan’s literacy rate in the 15-plus age group three years ago stood at about 74.5 percent with male literacy at 81.3 percent and female at 67.5. There’s a fire-breathing dragon right there, nestled in those figures.

Why, if the USA is so much more literate than we are, do our people’s minds work so similarly? Why are the religious zealots in both countries as extreme, the common man as misinformed and as easily taken for a ride?

Neither country possesses a thriving democracy. Few in either country possess education which, mind you, is distinct from literacy. Few in either place it seems, judging from recent events, are taught values such as tolerance, fairness, work ethics, a disinclination towards greed, and a distaste for violence.

It implies a similarity between our education, the sort that encourages an interest in reading and learning, as well as our values which are mostly a product of tarbiyat (upbringing). It also illustrates the difference between literacy and education.

Values have little to do with finances. An example is Allama Muhammad Iqbal, a great poet and philosopher whose father was a humble tailor without formal education. His mother too was uneducated but she was known to be wise, generous and charitable. Yet they were far sighted. Iqbal graduated from Government College in Lahore, then went on to Cambridge and Lincoln’s Inn as a lawyer. The products of his intellect and his values are known to us all and require no introduction.

If the most basic aim of life is to exist, the ultimate is to exist rationally and with kindness, to try and understand the meaning of life while helping others to do the same. Education and values enable one to reach the ultimate whereas literacy is but the basic rung, the first step towards climbing up if you choose to do so.

It is the habit of reading born of real education that makes a person choose to climb further.

Reading– which presumes something other than of the Mills and Boons genre– is like an extendable cobweb brush. It helps you reach otherwise unreachable areas, to become aware of ideas other than those that exist around you. It helps you to examine and evaluate those ideas and come to conclusions, perhaps different ones to those that may be generally accepted in your society. No, there is nothing wrong with that. The general public– that phrase sounds rather snobbish but isn’t meant to be– is not wont to read, nor is it exposed to much of the world outside. An obvious reason is the pace of life, the basic struggle to exist that keeps most people from thinking beyond their livelihood, and from travelling. Also the fact that reading may not a common pursuit in the home they grew up in. Most schools do not lay much stress on further reading. They definitely do not in Pakistan, although they should. Instead the powers-that-be outright discourage people from thinking, as evidenced by the liberal implementation of bans and censorship.

Ghamidi sahib put it best when he said that we desperately need to learn the rules of disagreement and debate, learn to listen, reason, evaluate and research. We need to inculcate toleration, and to think before we speak. Less need for U-turns then, aside from other advantages.

When all these things born of real education become a way of life, is when politicians will be unable to lead large ignorant segments of the population by the nose like horses.

The reason Mr Trump has so many supporters is that he is able to say whatever he likes and his supporters are unlikely to verify his statements. The reason our government is able to take credit for the low numbers of covid in Pakistan for example is because no one checks, because they are too busy trying to plain stay alive. While the police and public by and large fail to wear masks, despite it being a mandatory requirement in Pakistan these days, we still hear that the government did a great job in keeping covid under control.

The reason both societies are so prone to riots and violence is that our people are not used to reasoning, neither are our governments prone to listening.

The USA, probably alone among the western countries, does not stress social welfare. It lacks affordable health care for its people, and has a poor support system for those without jobs. So much like us. And the police in that country is prey to the same faults as ours.

It is when all these things are addressed, when education right from the start encourages people to think outside the box, when rational steps are taken to make life easier for the masses so they have the leisure to do other than work, that people get into the habit of thinking.

The question is: does a wiser, less gullible, public suit those who govern? Will you answer that or should I?