THE POWER OF WORDS

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/08/01/the-power-of-words/

“The unexamined life is not worth living”

Socrates

People must have the ability to read and write to be able to work at most professions, and also so that they may be aware of what happens around them, but several things prevent them from doing so. Illiteracy of course is the major factor preventing people from reading, and censorship is another. Neither of them is a new phenomenon. They both involve words.

Words are easily the most powerful things in the world: words on paper, as well as spoken words. We grope desperately for them if the right words do not come to mind, and a sudden or prolonged silence between individuals can be more unpleasant than a physical dispute.  Words are potent, they can change the course of events, move obstacles and transform lives. That is why, throughout history, words— not guns or bombs— have posed the biggest threat to those who seek to remain in power. Guns after all can only kill and bombs destroy, and then what? Power means nothing if there is no one to wield it over.

Plato in the Apology, called his mentor Socrates ‘Myops’, which in English means ‘Gadfly’; the name refers to Socrates’ ability to chafe the Athenian political scene, and not allow it to become complacent, very much like a spur or a biting insect pushing at a slow-moving horse. According to Plato, Socrates believed that one must ‘question everything, admit what you do not know, and never stop seeking wisdom/knowledge.’

His weapons, to put it another way, were words. And for his pains Socrates was condemned to death, by drinking poison. Free speech and the tendency to question and seek knowledge has never been welcome to those who seek to remain in power at any cost, censorship is nothing new; people encounter it every day all over the world.

There are so many avenues through which information reaches us, the old means such as newspapers, magazines and books, the relatively newer ones such as the radio, television and the newest and most potent of all, the internet.

None of the older means of communication were as interactive as the internet, as a result of which more people use the ‘net than they ever read. There is a cell phone in almost every hand, even in poor countries, making it harder and harder to prevent information from being disseminated. This poses a problem for those seeking to control, but not for those seeking to facilitate reading.

The population of Pakistan is predominantly un-educated, but this has not stopped its people from accessing social media. They use it not simply to listen to inane jokes on Tik-Tok, but also to message each other. Even those who do not otherwise read, manage to message each other on their phones.

Take for example the following message from a young man to his employer:

Baji ji may aaj nahi aa sakta. Behen bimar hai. Mai us ko huspatal lay ja raha hoon

The young man who wrote this knows enough of the English alphabet to be able to convey his Urdu message in Roman script, even though, if he were given an English book meant for students even at the secondary school level, he would be unable to read it.

You wonder why he did not use the Arabic script to convey the same message.

The reason is that the Arabic script, beautiful as it is, does not come off as well on electronic media as the Roman does. The Arabic script is always written in the cursive style. There is no provision in that script for each letter to be written separately. It is hard to decipher small Arabic script, dots and all, on a phone as compared to a similar sized Roman script. And when it is written in the cursive it is not easy on the eyes with the dots and dashes not always where they ought to be. And so, the legibility of the Arabic script takes a knock. This is why an increasing number of people— and they are not always uneducated— have taken to writing as the young man did above.

It is possible that this is one way to encourage people to read and write— on the phone, for which the Roman script is far better suited than the Arabic.

It would definitely be worth considering replacing the Arabic script by Roman as far as Urdu is concerned, to make it easier for people to communicate. It isn’t unheard of. Turkey has done it, as has Malaysia. Arabic is always taught separately in Pakistan in any case, so that children can learn to read the Quran. If Urdu turns Roman in an organized fashion, would this help in the fight against illiteracy? Changing a script does not mean leaving behind a literary heritage, because the words themselves, the powerful aspect of language, would remain. If changing a script means more people can read that literary heritage, and more people can learn about the world, would this make it harder to impose opinions, and foist incorrect information upon them?

DESERVING? OR NOT?

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/07/18/deserving-or-not/

Sex and gender are the perspectives from which most things are judged in a society like Pakistan’s. And since women are the weaker gender, they are subject to a host of compulsions, frequently against the law, no problem: they can be married against their wish, they must not work (except of course when they must, when they are grudgingly allowed), they must muffle themselves up in unnecessary garments regardless of the heat, and a whole myriad of musts; later they must not, God forbid, promote rights and independence for other women.

And that is what Malala Yusufzai came up against, as did the OUP when it included Malala’s name in a book that contained a list of national luminaries, and in which her photograph was printed next to that of Major Aziz Bhatti Shaheed of the Pakistan Army. A brave man, Aziz Bhatti Shaheed, one to whom the nation owes a heavy debt of gratitude for his courage and ultimate sacrifice. May the Almighty reward him.

The question most frequently asked is: what gives Malala the right to be included among that list of illustrious people? What has she done to earn it?

As much as any other person who stands in the path of danger for the sake of the country and others, the child Malala stood up to the Taliban with her demands for education for women at a time when they, the Taliban, were shutting down schools for girls in Swat. With the support of her parents, the young girl gave speeches supporting education for women, and became a blogger under a pseudonym, reporting on the condition of women under the Taliban. She was unlucky enough to be exposed and became a target for terrorists.

Malala, as much as any other person who actually lost their life in the process, almost lost hers when at the age of just 14, she was shot in the face for her crimes; if the man who shot her had anything to say in the matter, she would have lost it. Clearly, the Amighty had other plans for her.

That she and her family escaped to Britain was not a choice, it was a necessity when it was not possible to treat her injuries as well in her home country, and when it became clear that this was not the safest place for the family to be.

She was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize, she won Pakistan’s National Youth Peace Prize, and 12 July (her birthday) is now officially Malala Day. She has also been awarded the Sakharov Peace Prize for Freedom of Thought in acknowledgment of her work, just before receiving the Nobel Peace Prize simultaneously with the Indian child rights activist, Kailash Satyarthi. Malala is the youngest person in the world to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to win the right to education for every girl, particularly in societies where it is often denied.

After that, in 2017 she was appointed the UN Messenger of Peace to promote female education, which is one of the UN’s highest honours.

All through this time, Malala has continued to support her cause for the right to education for girls. She has spoken about it, and written about it. Her support has not been an idle matter.

In 2013, Malala and her father launched the Malala Fund, which strives to ensure that girls around the world have access to 12 years of free, safe, quality education. The countries that have priority for the purposes of this fund include Afghanistan, Brazil, India, Lebanon, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey, where girls are most likely to miss out on secondary education.

For those– surprisingly many– people who criticize Malala, there is this question: how many people have won as many accolades and achieved as much for her country and women in general, even before the ripe old age of 24? Have you?

But this fact of Malala being considered unworthy of praise is only one of the issues raised by the episode when Malala’s name was included in a book published by the OUP. When this happened a team belonging to the PTCB, the Punjab Textbook and Curriculum Board, walked into the OUP bookshop and confiscated these books, and conducted raids across the city to confiscate them wherever else they were being sold.

Censorship is almost always a futile exercise, and it is definitely always based on some particular group’s version of what the public has a right to read. And clearly, it is not always run along sensible guidelines.

Such censorship may be understandable if a publication is promoting violence, or murder or treason, or other dangerous activities. But for adding Malala’s photograph to a book of luminaries…? The mind boggles at the intellect of persons entrusted with policing our reading.

All this takes place, please note, while the Taliban are set to stage a comeback in Afghanistan. They have already taken over the area on the Afghan side of Chaman on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, with a letter to the local imam that states, according to a resident of the district, that women must not go to the bazaar without a male companion, and men should not shave their beards.

It would seem that we need more Malalas, not less. It would also seem that our PTCB needs to sort its values out, and if it must exist it should clamp down on its insecurities.

IMMINENT IS HERE

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/07/10/imminent-is-here/

Preparing for the killing heat

We have been warned over the years that climate change is imminent, that glaciers will melt and shrink, global temperatures will rise, and there will be other disastrous consequences of throwing bouncers at the environment. We did not pay much attention to those warning us, ignoring them and often labeling them as some kind of a plot…Zionist, Western, take your pick, the usual stuff. Unfortunately, the warnings are now reality. Glaciers have shrunk, ice on water courses is breaking up too early, sea levels are rising and several places in the world such as a hitherto benign British Columbia in Canada and the never-so-benign Death Valley in California are witnessing heatwaves to rival Jacobabad in Sindh, once known as Khanger, the erstwhile heat champion of the world. Welcome to the year 2021, the year many of us might find ourselves inside an overheated oven simply because we neglected to learn how to turn down the heat. Now the world either learns to live with an up to ten-degree Fahrenheit increase in temperatures in the coming years, or people will die on a very large scale. We must heed the warnings, there may still be time. We must do something constructive to combat global warming.

The urgent need to minimize the effects of this warming on our long-suffering population is what this write-up is about. The rich have enough, and although their practices need to be changed, the same practices that have brought about global warming, it is the poor who need most help.

Pakistan is a poor country. Most of Pakistan’s population lives in the rural areas. Most people in these rural areas are unable to afford much by way of housing, so a small house composed of a single bedroom, a courtyard mostly for the cattle, and nothing else, is the norm. A corner of the courtyard serves as a kitchen and the fields as bathrooms.

Because rural areas are mostly fields, little concrete and no bitumen, you can get a little respite from the heat under a tree or in the great outdoors by night. The excessive morality of urban life does not plague the life of villagers, so if they must sleep on charpoys on the roof where the women are visible to neighbours, so be it.

That is not the case in our cities where villagers sometimes move to, so they can find work in fields other than agriculture, pun not intended.

What they discover when they move, however, cannot be an improvement on what they leave behind. Cramped living conditions, filthy and excessively hot, thanks to the concrete and bitumen everywhere; this is what city life turns out to be for the poor. It is not possible for women to sleep on the roofs here, because the tight housing means they can be seen by their neighbours, and nerves are not taught to recover from such sights in our cities.

Many things can and must be done to prepare for the global warming that is upon us, because the resultant heat is beyond human endurance. One is to ensure that houses, however small, are constructed and designed better, to protect their residents against the heat.

To increase the number of trees must be made a priority. Construction and design must be overseen and thermal insulation made mandatory. There are a variety of insulation materials out there. They must be made available and affordable. Buildings must face away from the sun at its hottest. Bricks that are used in the construction of buildings must be designed to hold a layer of air within them. Windows must be recessed as much as possible and shaded against the sun. It should not be allowed to use metal in outside doors and windows because metal emits much more heat than wood.

The older systems of construction such as verandahs and ventilators high up on walls made great sense in our weather conditions. Extremely effective as they are, verandahs are not always affordable given the shortage of space, but ventilators can and must be mandatory to allow the hot air to exit the building, seeing that hot air rises. Attention must also be paid to cross ventilation. In the absence of verandahs, green netting fabric must be provided free of cost to low-income housing as protection against the sun.

The old methods of plastering over construction with mud and clay are a great method of insulation. They should be used as a crucial finishing touch to all buildings, and renewed as required.

There is a greater danger of fire in extreme heat conditions. Fire proofing must be incorporated and fire escapes and evacuation regulations ignored at very great cost to those responsible.

One of the most common means of storing water now are those ubiquitous blue plastic storage tanks mounted on rooftops. It is best if plastic storage is not exposed to the sun long-term. According to the National Geographic, ‘most plastic items release a tiny amount of chemicals into the food or beverages they contain.  As temperature and time increase, the chemical bonds in the plastic increasingly break down and (those) chemicals are more likely to leach’ into the stored item. According to the FDA, the long-term effects build up in a big way. Alternate methods of storing water must therefore be found and used and these must be comparable in cost to the blue plastic tanks, or else they will not catch on.

Measures rarely have a long life in this country, which appears to favour a stop, start and disappear stance until someone suddenly decides to move again. That sporadic lifestyle has become the norm. It has been this way with encroachments for example, when those who encroached around drains and markets were allowed to do so for years until suddenly, the authorities decided to enforce the rules, ruthlessly ousting the long-term offenders in the process. The fact is that those who allow encroachments to take place and to persist are as much the offenders as those who build those encroachments. They should be held equally responsible for infringements of the law.

The same must apply to those who build chicken coops for people to live in, airless, hot ovens that are a crime against anything living – animal, or human.  The problem of course is that those who are less affluent are often not considered to be human by those with wealth in their pockets. That is the biggest problem in every sector of life in Pakistan.

FIGHTING THE VIRUS

 https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2021/07/04/fighting-the-virus/

We get vaccinated so we may develop immunity to a given infection, which happens when the vaccinated person’s body learns to make antibodies against the organism that gives rise to that infection. If, however, many or most people around us are not vaccinated, they have no antibodies against an infection and are able to pass on the infection. That means that even vaccinated persons have an uphill task maintaining immunity and it isn’t long before they succumb and get infected, regardless of the vaccination. 

In the case of Pakistan, the Chinese vaccine against Covid-19 that we are getting, while it works, apparently does not have as high a rate of success as some others out there, and even of those out there no vaccine is able to completely prevent the disease. It is therefore proportionately important to take precautions as recommended, such as wearing a mask and avoiding contact with large groups of people, particularly indoors. 

The other aid to immunity, which goes hand in hand with individual vaccination, is herd immunity. This means that when the majority of the population acquires immunity to a disease, even those who do not have immunity are protected because the people they encounter are most of them not passing on the infection. The way to acquire this is to vaccinate the majority. 

This is not happening in Pakistan.

While the vaccination campaign here appears to be better organized than most other government efforts, it has not managed to reach the bulk of the population. Vaccinations are available for all eligible persons but they are not easily accessible; many people have to travel inconvenient distances to be vaccinated. It also means that all or even most eligible persons are not convinced that they require vaccinations.

There are many rumours doing the rounds, dominant among which are those that say that anybody who receives the vaccine is likely to kick the bucket at the end of two years. The other is that the vaccine alters a person’s DNA and should therefore be avoided. Yet another is that the vaccine renders people sterile, which means that it makes them unable to have children. Other rumours say that these vaccinations are a Western plot, a means of controlling the world, and of course there is the inevitable opinion that vaccines go against the Will of God, that had He wanted us not to get covid-19 He would not have created the virus. There are also those who doubt the origin of the virus itself, saying that it is manmade and therefore some kind of a vague conspiracy towards some mysterious end.

Such rumours are of course also rife in other countries, but this is about Pakistan where illiteracy and ignorance kill as many as does this virus and others.

The result of these rumours is something that almost every relatively well-to-do household can report: a reluctance on the part of its workers, the cook, the cleaner, and so on, to be vaccinated, and if not an outright reluctance almost always a complete indifference to receiving the shots. This is also how it is almost throughout the rural population. Also, when someone is willing to be vaccinated, they require someone to register them, since many such persons are illiterate and unable to handle the process. Perhaps the registeration can be done at the desk at the centres rather than online? 

It has now been approximately a year-and-a-half since the first known case of covid-19 was recorded in Pakistan, and we are very far from achieving herd immunity against the disease, even though the rate of infection appears to have gone down.

It is obviously not just this vaccine that has attracted such rumours, others too have suffered because of them, specifically the polio vaccine. Those who administer that vaccine have on several occasions been attacked and even killed. As a result, Pakistan is one of only two countries that has been unable to stamp out that devastating illness. The other is our neighbour, Afghanistan.

The way around this problem is not simple. Illiteracy does not seem to be the only barrier since such views are also not unusual in the United States either. Perhaps it is the quality of education that is at fault? In the US another barrier to vaccination is an inflated sense of personal or civil rights, that makes some people bristle at being made to do anything as a group. That cannot be the case here, since for most people in Pakistan civil rights is an unknown aspect of existence, a great pity in general.

What is most likely driving the resistance here is an ingrained suspicion of ‘The West’, strengthened by our colonial past and the more recent alleged attempts of the US to capture bin Laden via Dr. Shakil Afridi.

The other far greater culprit is likely to be the right-wing conservative segment of society, from where most of the irrational fears of the West appear to stem. They have many platforms, among which the Friday congregation is always a major one. Other than that, word of mouth, and social media are major culprits.

It’s hard to figure out what to do about this. Penalise those who spread such rumours? That just does not seem right. Clamp down on Friday congregations? As impossible as a clampdown on social media.

Penalties are in the hands of those in power, and those in power come with their own views and their own axes to grind. That means there is no guarantee of the penalty being directed at the right targets.

At the end of the day, the only thing that offers any hope is not just education, but a scientific, rational education, one based on proof and facts, which by no means suggests that the humanities should be rejected in academics. Absolutely not. Humanities subjects are crucial, but they should be supplemented with a necessary and hefty dose of reason, fact and science. In the final analysis that is the only way forward, and even that is no guarantee that the population of any given country will do the right thing.