THE CROWDED VAULT

By Rabia Ahmed  Pakistan Today 27 June 2012


Dramatis personae of the farce otherwise known as Pakistan

With all that needs to be done, there’s nothing but a lot of noise and you needn’t strain much to get the lyrics. It’s just one word: me, me, me, me, me, me. The Chief Justice with his selective verdicts, the wily President and his moronic sidekick, the squealing PML(N) leadership, the eternally hopeful Q, and the confused Khan. Here is some pie in the sky until the plain bread arrives, if ever:

Make the CJ president in return for taking it easy. He can move into the Suoto Moto suite at the President House and enjoy the increased obsequiousness of countless minions, plus the additional satisfaction of kicking Mr Gilani out of the sixth floor where he may currently be found licking his wounds and playing at being PM in purdah. Check everywhere for abandoned baggage, stray Nargis Sethis and Lasharis tend to linger on the scene. Mr Gilani can (once he’s licked his wounds), take a letter writing tutorial and take notice of and record power outages once they top the unbearable mark. That should keep him happily occupied in between hand kissing ceremonies in his dusty native town.

Give the current occupant of the presidency a one way ticket to Switzerland where he can lock himself in Gringotts’ vault 720 and spend his life running his fingers through his accumulated galleons. Hopefully they’ll multiply and burn as fast as he can touch them.

Mr Gilani’s son can join Mr Zardari Bhutto in the vault or else check into a drug rehab, while the Bhutto hopeful must get his butt back into school where it should be and learn to wait until he’s a bit less wet behind the ears before he returns, if then.

Nawaz Sharif would be better off running a flash halwa joint where he can sit cross legged at the wok squeezing vengefully complicated whorls into the burning oil. His brother on the other hand would be great at selling kites; bright clean colourful kites, many of them, and he can hold all their lines in his own one hand. He wouldn’t get very far but that’s not the point.

Aitzaz Ahsan could make guest appearances on the Bandar Road series where he could engage Mirza sahib in baith bazi sessions. Oh and he must also take refresher courses in Kathak dance. He knows the footwork but has forgotten the neck movements.

What should one do with Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain? It would probably be best if he switched places with Mr Ashraf and became the PM rather than nominating people for the post of deputy PM. I quite like him, and he’s proved he can leave the post if he has to. But he must do a correspondence course first with the gobbledygook school of elocution. We have enough international misunderstandings without more of his creation (Shujaat Hussain: ‘Baitho, thanks, Khao’= Cameron Munter: NATO tanks jao!)

As for Mr Ashraf, well if he can manage to cure himself of his unfortunate addiction for sticking his fingers into power outlets he could stick himself anywhere he likes, really. We couldn’t care less, truly.

Much the same could be said for the other Chaudhrys, Pervez Elahi and Nisar Ali Khan. We definitely couldn’t care less.

The real mucky players in the field now, the Meher Bukharis and the Mubashir Lucmans of this country… they’re easier than the others: just skip their channel.

Malik Riaz…another candidate for Gringotts? It’s getting a bit crowded, that vault. But then again, should we care? Nah. He’s done his bit and found them all and in the darkness bound them. We’re still uncertain who holds the one ring that rules them all though.

Imran Khan is a bit harder to place. We love him for those wonderful sixers. In that far away time when things were bad but not quite as bad as they are now, he hit them just when we needed them, with a resounding whack and two. He was in his element then, and one is never quite sure if he’s in it now. How about giving him a madrassah to run with a pulpit from which he could rant five times a day? The kids are already there and waiting.

Quite the neighbourhood this one, the trendy madrassah, the corner jalebi joint, the colourful kite vendor and one covert ring to rule them all. None of this makes much sense, I know, but neither does anything else the way it is right now.

HEROICS AND THE LAW

                                                                                                  

        Sunday, 10 Jun 2012 10:23 pm 

By Rabia Ahmed   Pakistan Today   http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/?  p=192964

The President of the Youth Wing of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf, Mr Abral-ul-Haq, was addressing a news conference in Lahore recently when some PTI youth wing office bearers arrived, and things became a trifle disharmonious. Calling the office bearers ‘troublemakers’, Mr Haq threw them out of the hall with the help of security officials. 

Those office bearers of the Youth Wing of the PTI have since been removed, and replacements appointed ‘for the interim period’.The situation is undeniably attractive; there are people on the public scene today one would love to throw out of the hall, so to speak, preferably by the seat of their pants in a horizontal position, but the pleasure is generally denied. Therefore, we shall not grudge Mr Haq the opportunity, nor condemn his actions as being unfair, except that the PTI does portray itself as a ‘tsunami,’ a term that conveys the graphic image of a wiping clean and orderly rebuilding of the old chaotic landscape. It is hoped therefore that due procedure has and will be applied.

The PTI has a constitution that prescribes notice prior to removal of office bearers, and appointments by majority vote. Given our history of sweeping aside such trifling matters and in the absence of more information, however, one may be excused some doubt, my apologies to the PTI if I am wrong. More certainly, one wishes that the erstwhile office holders had exercised restraint on their pre-pubescent emotions and behaved as office holders of a political party must: with sense. But there is a dearth of both restraint and sense everywhere in this emotionally unstable country, not least among its political parties. How can a youth wing be expected to behave otherwise?It is rather a trend here to allow good judgment to be overridden by waves of emotion (the tidal imagery appears to be catching). It does not matter what the constitution or the law prescribe, it is what the heart and the liver dictate (an overly literal translation but it does expose the absurdity of allowing organs to master the man) that generally counts.

Some days earlier, a rally protesting power loadshedding was held along the Mall in Lahore. Once a peaceful and dignified main artery of the city, the Mall is now the scene of frequent rallies against the various issues rapidly making this country an unlivable place.




Businesses along the thoroughfare, already incurring loss due to power loadshedding and now suffering additionally as a result of frequent rallies, had petitioned the courts to ban processions along the Mall. A ban was therefore in force when this rally took place in contravention of Section 144.Accordingly, it is reported, the police (very properly) registered an FIR against the participants of the rally, some 600 persons belonging to the PTI, including several of its senior leaders. Another procession taken out for the same reason along the same route by the PML(N) however held no repercussions for the PML(N) leaders, even though a similar petition was filed against them. That FIR was simply not accepted by the police, which should have had no choice in the matter. Later, in a grandiloquent gesture, the Chief Minister of the Punjab, Mr Shahbaz Sharif, asked the police to ‘quash the FIR’ against the PTI.Such magnificent gestures appeal to a public ever thirsty for emotional fodder with which the politicians of Pakistan are ever ready to feed it.

Few will question the validity of such ‘generosity’ against a rival, or the ‘chivalry’ of a chief minister who requests the police to disregard a valid report, something he has no authority to do, or the preferential treatment meted out to the CM and his party. We have no news yet as to whether the IG Police deferred to the chief minister as he should not have done, but they generally do.There is confusion in people’s minds – a critical and dangerous overlap between heroics and the law, between a subjective personal preference and what is right. Comments following news reports explain this well:‘I really don’t like this person Abrar-ul-Haq. He doesn’t deserve to be the president of PTI Youth Wing,’ growls one reader following that report about the PTI’s youth wing.And now with the news of the case against the Chief Justice’s son a reader enthuses: ‘Judiciary has proved that there is no one above the law, not even the nears and dears of the judges. Those who have chosen the path of mudslinging on judges will be vanished in the dust of history while only truth will prevail. We fully support our Honourable CJ and his great companions’ (sic).Gawrsh!

THE REVERSE TRUTH

By Rabia Ahmed  Pakistan Today 04 June 2012
http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/?p=190735

I’ve had it up to here with men who insist on directing female drivers. Today’s column is therefore dedicated to a prime specimen of the aforementioned, a parking attendant at the Hameed Lateef Hospital in Lahore, home to some of the worst drivers on earth (Lahore that is, not the hospital). My dedicatee has probably only ever driven a tricycle if that, yet there he was angrily insisting (among other suggestions) that I reverse…just as a family of four darted behind my all-ready-to-move car. For readers anxiously waiting to know, I did not reverse just then, so huh.


It is the firm conviction of every Pakistani pedestrian that he is constitutionally bound (which is probably not the best reason to give since no Pakistani takes the constitution seriously at all unless he detects an opportunity to abrogate, break or amend it) to cross close behind a reversing car. I seem to remember writing about this before but it is my confirmed belief that there is group out there called the MGDHA (Must Give Drivers Heart Attacks) which is a co-subsidiary once removed of the PRTB (Punjab Road Transport Board), closely related to the CIA (since all Pakistan’s problems stem from that agency). Members of this group are employed on a roster, on call at a moment’s notice to leap behind moving cars just as they engage into reverse. It is commission based remuneration: the closer one crosses to a reversing car, the higher the commission, and a glare at the hapless driver earns a bonus. The driver’s too busy draped over the wheel saying things like ‘p-p-wh-hh-?!’ anyway, so members of the MGDHA are never apprehended. So for all you men out there but particularly for you, Hameed Lateef Parking Attendant Monstrosity, I’m writing the rest of this column backwards. It’s essentially factual if you just reverse what I’ve said from here on:


The Government of Punjab on Friday did not shift its camp office to the Minar-e-Pakistan, thereby utterly failing to express solidarity with the public (which they would have failed to do even if they had shifted there because it’s such a moronic idea), against the chronic over supply of power to the city.The Chief Minister of the Punjab Mr Shahbaz Sharif did not say this since it would sound too kitschy and too much like electioneering, but he sincerely felt he could relax best while the people were sleeping so well due to the uninterrupted supply of electricity in the province.He would have said, if he had not been so genuine, that the government had not set up its Camp Office under the Minar-e-Pakistan to show solidarity with a public enjoying so many hours of an abundant supply of electricity, because he was mindful of the fact that it would be too gimmicky a gesture, and that the Minar, as a national monument was not the best site for a Chief Minister to be kipping down in a tent, with or without a portable john. So he simply installed power generators and UPS systems at the camp office (to which he did not move) and left it at that, to prove that he was one of a multitude which had such easy access to generators and UPSs (and also to portable johns). 


As a result of security protocol the Chief Minister could not reach the Camp Office (that was not set up) where he was due to preside over a meeting of the Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA). This was another expression of solidarity with the public which too is unable to get to appointments, or hospitals to die or have babies, as a result of traffic jams caused by the security protocol never awarded to the Chief Minister, his wife, his mother in law, her uncle’s grandmother and his great uncle’s second wife’s entire family. The meeting was not attended by the Commissioner of Lahore, the DCO, the MD WASA, and members of Punjab Assembly who were all engaged at the time in writing nasty letters to the President, the PM, and the Speaker of the National Assembly in protest against the proposed carving out of another province from Sindh. All of their letters included the word ‘flay’ in the first paragraph and concluded with suggestions involving the addressee’s female relatives right after ‘yours faithfully.’Oh and all the participants who did not attend, including the chief minister, did not wear black ribbons, because they felt that this (again) was too gimmicky a gesture and smacked too much of electioneering and currying favour with a public already so enamoured of the PML(N) and its asinine behaviour.

MULLAHS GONE VIRAL

Pakistan Today 28 May 2012 http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/?p=188566

by Rabia Ahmed

The biggest enemy of the Muslim world lurks within the fold, the mullah cabal that rules the hearts and minds of the poor and the illiterate, and nowhere more so than in this luckless land of the pure. One of the biggest crimes they will have to answer for is their relentless campaign against the vaccination of children against polio.

Polio, one of the most dreaded diseases this century, is caused by a virus only rarely contracted by adults but causing crippling lifelong disability in children. Those who contract it are moreover susceptible to a debilitating Post Polio Syndrome in later life.


There were no known means of preventing polio until the discovery of the polio vaccine in the 1950s. Since its introduction in 1955, the polio vaccine, administered orally to children, has helped to eradicate polio from the United States, a country where alone in the 1940s 35,000 people were disabled by this disease every year. Since then the World Health Organisation has reported an almost 99 percent decrease in reported cases between 1988 and 2010 all over the world, a result of concerted effort by the governments of the world to vaccinate children in their countries. It is no coincidence that the three countries that are an exception to this success story belong to the Muslim bloc: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. In these three countries polio remains endemic.

Religious leaders (with surprising exceptions such as Jamiat e Ulema e Islam Maulana Sami ul Haq) in all three countries have used their sermons to propagate the view that the oral drops are an American ploy to depopulate the Muslim world, since, (they say), these drops induce sterilisation. They also claim that the drug used is contaminated with pig fat and is therefore haram.

Nigeria, once close to its targets in the eradication campaign has recently seen a resurgence of polio while Pakistan and Afghanistan have always remained far from their goal. And now, giving credence to this propaganda is the campaign by Dr Shakil Afridi, him of the CIA backed fake polio campaign fame, some say it was a Hepatitis C vaccine…the end result is the same.

Honestly, I don’t know if I care as much about Osama eradication as I do about the eradication of the polio virus, maybe because I have seen what it does to people at close hand. I’m glad Osama is gone, but like a shark’s teeth his place will be taken by another, and another…and then another until we eradicate the whole mind set, and nothing at all has been done about that as yet. But every child vaccinated is another child saved and by putting that process in jeopardy is where Dr Afridi betrayed his country. Call it treason, call it treachery, it works the same way whichever way you look at it.

The Americans are looking at the matter from a single view point, their own, an angle from which they are prone to view most issues, as perhaps we all are. But sitting here in this chair in front of a computer in Lahore, Pakistan, the prospect of trusted public health professionals running fake campaigns and dancing to the tune of foreign intelligence agencies is none too appealing. I don’t care who they are attempting to shoot down, such insidious workings cannot be conducive to public health in any country anywhere.

A public official should be answerable to a single authority in temporal terms, the one of the country whose passport he/she holds which must be of the country where he/she holds public office. In simple terms (with what must appear to be a sudden change of subject right at the end of this column), this means that public officials must not owe allegiance to any country other than their own. In other words, public officials must not hold dual nationality. But this is not a sudden change of subject. It pinpoints what is so irksome (to put it mildly) in the Afridi case, the fact that the doctor was working for a foreign agency all the while he pretended to be working for his own, an agency belonging to his other country of allegiance, one moreover whose agenda in this case happened to be detrimental to his country of employment, and I am not speaking of the capture of militants, however much carnage they may have caused in this world, in or out of New York.

With due respect, Ms Clinton, there are harmful things out there other than Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Because of your country’s obsession with both it is possible that the bulk of the polio cases in the foreseeable future may be from Pakistan. More collateral damage?

BAD MANNERED HUSBAND/WIFE

By Rabia Ahmed

Pakistan Today 22 May 2012  


http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/?p=186916

    

An overlap of religion and superstition

Our dog, normally an endearingly goofy canine, bit a child on the bum the other day while being taken for his daily constitutional. The mother of the child, an even tempered lady, did not waste her breath on recriminations. Instead she borrowed some red chillie powder from our cook. Apparently, if you pack a dog bite with red chillies (ouch! ouch! and aargh!) taken from the dog’s owner’s kitchen, the wound heals fast and well.

We’re naturally grateful to have escaped the mother’s ire, but that poor kid, surely the antidote was worse than the bite?

It is said that ignorance and superstition bear a close mathematical relation to each other. Therefore, superstition is naturally rife in Pakistan where you find advertisements such as these:

“Within few minutes, we’ll make your life cool and calm, Insha-Allah.

Bad-mannered husband/wife, hurdles in love marriages

Demon’s effects (jinnat ka saaya), improper love affairs

Family disputes, bounded business

Sexual diseases, effects of evil spirit (Aasaib)

Infertility, unemployment

Psyche problems, adversity

Study problems, visa problems

Property disputes, other problems (sic)”

What a delightful mix of nasty predicaments, and you know its Pakistan when visa problems are right up there with STDs, demons and infertility. I wonder what antidotes they prescribe to such problems. Would wearing an amulet with a few scribbled lines take care of ‘wife hurdles in love marriage?’, whatever that means?

Other than that the advertisement is a prime example of the overlap between religion and superstition, and heck no, I’m not going to say the two are one and the same. Other than the fact that I value my life, I definitely don’t think they are. But in this country, where if you have warts and would like to get rid of them you are advised to take a broom and sweep around a shrine, they are hard to separate, especially when the devil is likely to dive into your cup of tea if you leave it uncovered at night.

There are the ubiquitous black cat phobias, and taboos against sleeping under jinn infested trees; the portentous tics (a different portent for each eye) and the firm belief in the ability of scissors to give rise to quarrels. There is a pre-marriage ceremony where the bride’s clothes are cut and stitched by female family and friends without the aid of scissors: they sit around tearing the fabric along the dotted line having first rent it apart with their teeth.

There is the belief that lunar eclipses cause birth defects (such as cleft lips) and disasters, even though the Prophet Mohammad (pbuh) was at pains to teach otherwise. This only goes to prove the same point further, that superstition often overrides religion, and in their ignorance can have a greater hold over people’s lives.

And so pregnant women must not attend funerals or pay visits of condolence because a proximity to disaster is likely to influence the destiny of the unborn child. A widow on the other hand, or a divorcee, is not invited to participate in wedding rituals. This is said to be part of the Hindu belief system, but because it certainly does not constitute any part of Islam can only be categorised as superstition here.

If you have a backache you are advised to locate an adult once a breach born baby and get him or her to kick you in the back. Presuming you fail to find such a person, a tight hug from a professional janitor will cure you just as well.

If you need to pick mushrooms remember they grow where snakes urinate, while the best way to tell edible mushrooms from poisonous ones is never to pick those a snake has licked. And if that snake happens to be a two-headed one make sure you kill it because two-headed snakes bring bad luck. However, beware that once you kill that snake you are likely to be pursued for life by its mate.

Foot and mouth disease may be cured if you lure a monkey within kicking distance of the sick animal and coax it to ride on the bovine’s back. Snatch a cat’s placenta away from it before it can devour it, and bury it in your lawn to keep evil spirits at bay, and unless you wish to develop vitiligo avoid milk after a meal of fish.

And here’s another tip for farmers (who have already been informed of ways to cure their cattle): write the names of ten individuals who profit from interest (of the banking variety,) and bury the names around your field. This will, if you please, prevent an infestation of white ants.

RENEWED FROM THE WEST?

By Rabia Ahmed 

15 May 2012

Pakistan Todayhttp://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/?p=184941

Where will change come from, if it comes at all?

The hundred year old Perth Mosque centrally located in the city of Perth, Western Australia, awoke one day to an interesting neon sign that flashed in garish letters from across the street: Girls! Girls! Girls! it screamed.

Appalled, the management raised the mosque walls to block out the offensive words.

We were particular about taking the children to the mosque on Eid but began questioning the exercise after the third year of my small son, daughter and I saying our prayers in a dingy basement among the Imam’s hastily discarded clothes, shoes and bedding. In that mosque that was the space reserved for women and children.

The following year we tried the Turkish mosque, a nicer place where women and children, although too close to the toilets, were much better provided for in a large hall well lit by a chandelier. It however was switched off by an arm that appeared through the dividing doors in the middle of Eid prayers. The lights remained on in the men’s section.

It is a theory close to many pious hearts here in Pakistan that all evil stems from the West. The other school of thought reckons that Islam, distorted beyond all recognition in today’s Muslim world, will be renewed from the West despite the policies of Western governments. Which of these opinions proves correct, it remains to be seen. Certainly neither of the two mosques above disproves the first theory.

Living in the USA on and after 9/11 was a traumatic if interesting experience. It was traumatic when the FBI came knocking with questions about Arab neighbours, a group of young boys sharing an apartment. The two men walked past the living room right into the bedroom before they spoke. Eid prayers at the DC Armory Washington DC following 9/11 were especially unpleasant with sharp shooters stationed above worshippers’ heads, guns at the ready; it was unsettlingly uncertain whether we were being protected or being protected against. Distrust of Muslims was like a crackling in the air, but in most cases it did not exceed a certain limit, and in time it dissipated to near usual levels, at least for the most part. This was better than in Western Australia even prior to 9/11. There were heart warming stories in the USA such as of the pastor who gave his Muslim neighbours the keys to his church after their mosque was bombed by zealots (there is never a shortage of these), and the non Muslims who formed a human chain around a local mosque in a symbolic gesture of protection of their Muslim neighbours.

It isn’t until a visit to the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) mosque in Northern Virginia though that one is reminded of the expectation of renewal from this quarter.

ADAMS supports a community of some five thousand Muslim families in a large building in a pleasant neighbourhood. Probably the most striking feature of the ADAMS mosque is a prayer hall that doubles as a badminton/basketball court when not in use for worship. In addition there is a bookshop, and rooms where language, computer and vocational courses are held, and drug and marriage counselling offered. There is a fair sized pleasant library, scouts and martial arts groups, a community medical clinic, and plenty of inter-faith dialogue.

Mohamed Magid, the Imam of the mosque is also President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). At no time while encountering the man or his mosque does one feel censured, either as to appearance or gender, which explains the busy, friendly atmosphere of the mosque Imam Magid leads, frequented by men, women and young people alike.

Imam Magid of ADAMS

It couldn’t be easy being an Imam in a country so sensitive to the mere existence of mosques, and Imam Magid admits that it isn’t. “Islamic scholars, centuries ago, never faced these issues,” he says in an article about him in the Huffington Post, referring particularly to the time he had to research and determine his stance on the issue of surrogate motherhood in Islam.

The success of the ADAMS mosque and its Imam underlines the importance of both an educated leader and community as a prerequisite for a healthy approach to religion. The Muslim community in Perth at the time consisted of a majority of less educated persons. Virginia and particularly its county of Fairfax where the mosque is located, is home to some of the best high schools in the country and the Muslims of that area chose it as their home for this reason.

Surely it is more possible for the real enlightened Islam, quite different to today’s version, one more attuned to the times, to re-emerge from such a background?

INFORMATION: AVAILABLE OR NOT

By Rabia Ahmed
Pakistan Today 7th May 2012          http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/?p=183034

Poised for flight?


Information, often used as a tool for control, is either freely available or else has curbs placed upon its availability.

Freedom of information is well explained in the American Library Bill of Rights which says that libraries, as the centre of ideas and information must cater to the information needs of everyone in the community, that no information must be excluded on the basis of the origin or views of those generating it. Every attempt is to be made to include different points of view, current and historical, none of which must be excluded for reasons such as doctrinal difference.

The opposite camp believes in curbs on the free availability of information.

On a league table ranking nations on the basis of freedom of press, the UK and the USA find themselves at 28 and 47 respectively this year. Pakistan ranks at 151.

Upon cursory examination, people in the West although more passionate in defence of freedom of information, and often with a higher rate of basic education appear to be less well-informed about world affairs than their poorer more illiterate counterparts in the Third World. I am not speaking of the Sarah Palins of either world who have a life of their own, but of the common man on the street.

It is usual, in Pakistan, to see a group of men squatting around their one literate member who reads from a newspaper. This suggests a relationship between the freedom and/or ability to procure information and the will to seek it out at the street level. The inference is that where information is easily available people lose the urgency to obtain it, as compared to when it is harder to access when there is a greater urge for it, although there are other related reasons.

It is important to remember that there is a lack of information, and then there is misinformation. The first is more common in the illiterate Third World and/or in countries where the state controls the media. The second…misinformation, of the rabid right wing variety, is freely available everywhere.

‘There is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the ‘devil’ only in order to drive the TV watcher to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism’. Former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook.

Correspondingly, for many countries around the world and certainly Pakistan, all things evil originate in the West and all current social ills are laid at its door.

There are analogies for the suppression of information in incidences of suppression and control of other kinds. One of the oldest, an attempt at suppressing rebellion by the murder of all newborn Jewish males resulted in a well known uprising. Today, the separation walls built by Israel along its borders restricting the freedom of movement of its citizens and neighbours have not succeeded in containing violence. And yet Israel is building another wall along its border with Lebanon.

The banning of books…Boris Pasternak’s Dr Zhivago, Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, Taslima Nasreen’s Lajja all failed to restrict readership. The first was translated into almost twenty languages even before it was published and won its author a Nobel Prize for literature. The Satanic Verses became a prime favourite overnight and was smuggled in every suitcase into countries where it was banned, while Lajja sold 50,000 copies within the first six months of its existence. The most recent, a controlled re-release of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kamp’ is set to be as ineffective seeing that the book is already available everywhere including online. The electronic age has of course opened another Pandora’s Box.

The presence of these restrictions and misinformation is a commentary on the short sightedness of the instigators. Governments that fail to deliver, schools that fail to educate, ideologies twisted and out of synch with the people they claim to represent, flawed projects and plans, (or their lack thereof)…and backwardness of implementation…these are the sources from which these restrictions and misinformation originate.

Anyone interested in controlling an electorate should think in terms of making information freely available, and to enable persons to access and disseminate it in safety. Chances are, the common man, being no academic, once able to access information with ease will no longer fall over himself to do so. So long, of course, that he is content where he is and is not eternally poised for flight, when of course he will be looking for information of the world around him. This is one of the other reasons for the urge for information mentioned before.