| November 4, 2001 | Sunday | Shaba’an 17, 1422 |
Is it Pakistan first or Pakistanis first? : LAHORE DIARY
ONE First read the headline “Foul play suspected in IBA’s MBBS test” it didn’t surprise at all. Examinations in our educational system have always been viewed with cynicism and suspicion. So now even the prestigious Institute of Business Administration (IBA) is being affected by foul play.
In fact, one has observed that with the passage of time some very fine institutions have become unable to sustain their image or retain their standards, treasured for so long, one may concede.
The above headline appeared on Wednesday, 31st October. And the next day came the headline “Health department punishes students for IBA’s fault, with the news that another test is to be held on 15 November”.
So the obvious question is: why are students being punished for something whose responsibility lies with the the health department and the IBA.
From the look of things the Sindh health department and other authorities concerned are going to have their way and hold the test all over again for over 5500 students on 15th November, in a climate of strikes, closures and protests for a variety of reasons. One would do well to keep one’s fingers crossed. Keep in mind that the month of Ramazan begins on 17th or 18th of November.
But the questions that parents and students wish to persist with are: why is no one in the concerned departments being punished? Where is the accountability that we keep hearing about? Whither good governance? Why has the Institute of business administration not made public what exactly went wrong?
There is a great deal of calculated ambiguity in what a spokesman for the IBA has said. This is what he was quoted as saying to Dawn: “We have informed the health department that things went wrong due to technical and human error and no IBA staffer was involved in unlawful activities”. He has not used the word “unethical”, please note. There is much that is acceptable, but not unethical in this society.
A brief recall of what exactly happened. The 31st October report said: “students seeking admissions to MMBS and BDS classes in government-run institutions have disputed the credibility of the entrance test conducted by IBA on October 28 at three different centres in the province of Sindh”.
“The students claimed that the testing authority (IBA) leaked a majority of the questions included in the test beforehand. Except the portion pertaining to the subject of English, all other portions of the 28 October IBA paper were available to the candidates who had taken admission at a coaching centre for aptitude-test preparatory classes”.
The details in this rather scandalous situation do make disturbing reading. Try and imagine 5500 students and their families in this awful situation, where an entire exercise for admission to medical colleges is to be carried out all over again. And for no fault of the students. It is the system that is unable to deliver. It is the IBA-health department axis that is failing the students. Or rather has failed them. Why can’t the meritorious students be examined on the basis of their intermediate examinations which were carried out by the boards of intermediate education? This is what students and parents argue in anger and in frustration, and with a great deal of justification. After all the boards of intermediate education are also proper platforms where students are tested, and where they have proven their worth. And the Board of Intermediate Education this year had adopted particularly stringent measures to ensure that standards were maintained.
It appears that there are vested interests and a mafia of sorts operating also in this particular field of education. But look what is happening when the IBA and the health department have come together to try and improve the system. As always there is another leakage of the test paper this year. All this highlights the overall levels of morality that we have in this society.
Even if that be so, the point is that in all fairness both the IBA and the health department should have made announcements to restore public confidence, which in this case means the confidence and trust of the students. That no one has been found guilty is what I find very strange and disappointing.
Has the IBA bothered to find out whether this “technical and human error” is just a coverup for something else? Has any inquiry been initiated into the matter and what are the terms of reference? Was the staff handling the test and its execution new or experienced?
The IBA is reputed to be producing managers and human resource personnel for the country’s management mainstream. What the IBA is doing in this case is precisely what the IBA teachers would condemn and criticise in other institutions.
One good thing that I have seen in this scandal is that the students have spoken out, and this in itself is a good sign that they are unwilling to take things lying down. This is heartening. The young may lose heart at the way the system treats them at times, but it is they the society is looking up to. There is no other option.
FIFTEEN people at a Christian congregation in Bahawalpur were shot dead last Sunday by masked gunmen.
Lt-Gen Khalid Maqbool (retired), the new Punjab governor, flew in, the first thing he did after taking oath as chief executive of the province. The general expressed all the right sentiments — shock at the barbarity, grief for the victims, sympathy for the bereaved and anxiety that this was not starting a trend. He also echoed the popular desire that the culprits be apprehended immediately, in fact ordered the police to nab them within a week.
If the general has shown more patience than most of his predecessors — traditionally a 72-hour deadline is set — given the resources, only the incorrigibly optimistic will bet on the police’s ability to carry out his command. A newspaper report the same day had indicated after all that the officers charged with the investigation had failed in some recent assignments of a similar nature.
Despite dozens of arrests and police’s claims of progress, most people have persisted in the apprehension that unless the killers were suicidally audacious and left a very distinct trail, or there is an angel sitting right on one of the investigators’ shoulders, quick success can be ruled out.
How does that leave us? Guessing, of course. And anybody’s guess is as good as mine.
The first public official reaction, as usual, had been a naive “We refuse to believe this has happened.” This led, as usual, to an inane “No patriotic elements could have done this,” “No religion sanctions such acts,” etc. To the grown up, of course, such chatter is a waste of breath. To them it is plain that healthy, moral people don’t behave in such a manner. It’s equally plain, of course, that governance is the business of identifying, and bringing to book the fiends, preferably anticipating and preempting their dastardly deeds, not just describing them. Then there was the routine mention of the “foreign hand” which, even when a fact, does not quite diminish the state’s responsibility to protect its citizens. Or does it?
There were reports in the press that the administration had ignored a warning to the effect that such an attack was likely. An explanation is certainly called for and if an omission can be established so should be the responsibility.
Several rights activists have argued that, given the culture of intolerance and irresponsible stereotyping, such attacks were the logical consequence of the Cross vs Crescent rhetoric of some groups protesting against the government’s decision to support the US-led coalition against the Taliban government in Afghanistan.
Some conspiracy theorists suggested even that some government agencies might be involved. Why? To blame it on some extreme outfits and justify action against them? But should the government ever decide to act against extremists, does it really lack justification? To blame it on India? But what have we achieved so far in terms of international support given the artillery fire on border villages it does not even deny that we can by attributing unsolved crime to our hostile neighbour? To seek more funds? But how perverse can one get?
Choose a hypothesis, as they say, to suit your taste. The inevitable conclusion in every case is that those killed in Bahawalpur represent our first mass casualty of the current war. Much harm may have been avoided, as is claimed, in choosing the ‘Pakistan First’ policy, but is there any denying the human and social costs? The apprehension is that we have just started paying.
There has been little mention of what the government plans to do to protect its citizens or how its coalition partners can help. In trying to make the whole world safer from terrorism, must we put on line the lives of the Pakistanis first?
AFTER some tentative days at the new job, our Nazims are fast coming into their own.
Some developments since their election, they could neither have foreseen nor caused, have certainly gone their way but of course you cannot fault a batsman for capitalizing on a placid wicket and a benign bowling. That they have made the most of the opportunities that came their way is beyond question.
Early on, they were denied authority over police and the cherished wireless-equipped vehicles were given instead to the district coordination officers. The cash-strapped district governments were on austerity budgets and when a council unilaterally enhanced the powers of its Nazim and his Naib to raise the ceiling on expenditure prescribed by the provincial government, everybody considered it a joke. What irked them even more, however, was the double jeopardy: they could be voted out of office as well as removed by an administrative fiat.
A Lahore council showed the way last week by adopting a resolution with overwhelming support to demand that the law be amended to make union council Nazims immune to a no-confidence vote. Of course almost all Nazims voted the right way, the dissent coming, almost exclusively, from the indirectly elected women councillors.
Next, in his first meeting with the district Nazims, the new Punjab governor urged them to be pro-active leaders and administrators. They were encouraged to take charge, even to routinely test the limits of their authority and assured that as long as they meant well, the government was 100 per cent behind them.
Emboldened, they reportedly told President Gen Pervez Musharraf in their meeting with him, that they were his constituency and his party, advised him not to shy away from politics. From him they got the assurance that they would be represented on the National Finance Commission and that no-confidence motions would not be allowed for at least 18 months.
Impressive gains. But was the adjective in basic democracy meant to signify ‘primitive’?
THERE lives in the quintessentially urban Gulberg, not from Dawn office, a lady who grew up watching cotton picking.
Now, cotton picking is a tough, demanding job. It is not for nothing that the crop has been linked from pharaohs’ Egypt to Lincoln’s America to defence and justification of slave labour and slavery. But beauty lies in the eye of the beholder and our lady was not then the considerate mother of three she is today but a heartless young girl. She found the scene enchanting.
Despite the more than three decades away from her native village, in fact all villages, the scene has stayed with her. When she asked her supplier of potted plants, who doubles as a gardening adviser of sorts for amateurs, to get her some cotton seedlings, the advice was clearly against the experiment. The sandy loam preferred by the plant, he argued, did not make for a reliable transplant. She insisted, however, and got her nursery in a shopper.
The well meaning gentleman, it seems, had been right after all. Despite jealous care — she starts and ends her Fajr to Maghrib day with her plants — only one survived. But the lone survivor was a cherished trophy and three or four bolls actually blossomed into flowers. Enough of a reward for her unfaltering belief in a dream.
Nor was she alone in her concern for the ‘crop.’ Her elder sister, who last visited during the sowing season and was a witness to the arguments over its viability, kept herself informed on its progress through her married daughter who lives in Lahore.
A CHILD was killed, another lost both his eyes and about 70 others were injured in fireworks accidents on a night considered one of the holiest by the faithful. The law, of course, provides for strict regulation of explosives, including fireworks. Who is in charge? —- ONLOOKER