| June 11, 2002 | Tuesday | Rabi-ul-Awwal 29, 1423 |
Thank you America, but it’s time for the physician to heal himself
Time to solve water crisis
State of short fiction
ONE would have thought that implementing or enforcing a written rule or regulation in any department, organization or institution ought to be a simple, routine matter. Not necessarily so it seems, judging from the fuss that erupted at the Quaid-i-Azam University last week.
Last Friday, the vigorous attempt by one department, namely the history department, to enforce a university rule barring any student from sitting for the final examinations if he or she did not fulfil the requirement of 80 per cent class attendance led to a commotion on the QAU campus, situated near the diplomatic enclave. Some 30 students, whose names had appeared on the list of those who had been declared ineligible for sitting for the terminal examination beginning on June 10, had staged a demonstration in front of the vice-chancellor’s office to protest against the enforcement of the 80 per cent class attendance rule.
The police had to be called in to prevent the situation from turning ugly. And the chairperson of the department had to threaten to resign if the administration allowed the students with less than 80 per cent class attendance to sit in the examinations. The protesting students had planned to stage another demonstration on the campus the next day.
Why is it that a department chairperson has to threaten to resign in order to get a simple, regular university rule enforced?
According to the acting VC, out of the 1,500 students at the QAU, 34 from various departments did not meet the required percentage of attendance to qualify for appearing in the terminal examination this year. This number, according to one faculty member, would have been much larger if the other departments had enforced the 80 per cent attendance rule as strictly as the history department had done.
The rule in question is clause 6 (c) iii under which a student will be eligible for appearing in the terminal examination provided that he or she has attended not less than 80 per cent of the lectures/seminars delivered to his or her class in each course and 80 per cent of the practicals/laboratory demonstration prescribed for the respective courses. The student falling short of the required percentage of attendance of lectures/seminars or practical/laboratory demonstrations shall not be allowed to appear in the terminal examination and shall be treated as having failed in that course.
At the beginning of the semester, all students are told by their respective course teachers that they would have to meet the 80 per cent attendance requirement in each course to be eligible to sit for the terminal examinations. Halfway through the semester, the list of the names of students not meeting this requirement are put up on departmental notice boards as a warning. In the case of the history department this time, letters were even sent in April to the parents of those students who were not meeting the attendance requirement, warning them of the consequences if their child continued to have a shortfall in attendance.
According to the above faculty member, enforcing the attendance rule uniformly and effectively throughout the university requires the support of each and every faculty member in all the departments, for it is he or she who has to record the students’ attendance at each lecture. What normally happens is that the faculty members are usually lenient about their students’ attendance. Rarely do they take a roll call at the beginning of each lecture to check who are actually present and who are not. Only those very clear-cut cases, where for instance the student has not even attended a single lecture in the course, are usually put on the list of those de-barred from appearing in the examination.
The reason that faculty members, as also the chairmen of departments, are normally not strict on this attendance rule is because they know that enforcement of the rule in letter and in spirit would only invite agitation and trouble from the students. And this is exactly what happened last Friday, said the faculty member.
Another reason that faculty members are reluctant to “take on” the students in this manner, he said, is because they are never sure whether the university administration would side with them or with the students. There have been other problems which pit faculty members against students, he continued, and the administration would employ delaying tactics and would not respect the decisions of the departments or the department committees.
In this attendance rule case, however, the administration has sided with the faculty members. After the first student protest on Friday, the police were called upon to issue warnings under Section 150 CrPC to all those students who staged the protest not to take part in any further demonstration and that if they did, they would be booked under 16 MPO (Maintenance of Public Order) and 107/151 PPC.
This is a major reason that the matter was resolved the next day and further demonstrations averted. The administration abided by the decision not to allow the students with less than 80 per cent attendance to sit for the examination. These students would, according to the rules, be given a second chance in the next semester.
Another faculty member maintained that only the chairman of the history department, Dr Dushka H. Saiyid, has managed to enforce the 80 per cent attendance rule because she has the backing to do it from her faculty members and from the university administration, being the wife of the former information minister, Mushahid Hussain. Others have not bothered to follow the rule so closely because they know the consequences, and the pressure that will eventually be exerted on them by the students, as well as by the university administration, to give up on it, he said.
According to another faculty member, one other reason probably why the 80 per cent attendance rule is not being strictly enforced is because such an attendance rule for appearing in examinations is unheard of in universities abroad, all the more so for a post-graduate university, which is what the QAU is. One might find such an attendance ruling in schools or even colleges, but not in a university, he said.
In the opinion of yet another QAU faculty member, whether one agrees or disagrees with the very idea of such an attendance rule, once a rule or regulation has been made, it should be implemented. If it is not being implemented, then it should not exist as a rule. For if rules are made and not implemented, the consequences would be indiscipline and disorder, and this, he says, no educational institution can afford.
In all fairness to those students who have been debarred from appearing in the terminal examination this time, the administration should ensure from henceforth that the 80 per cent attendance rule is applied and enforced strictly throughout the university.
I KNOW a Sri Lankan journalist who is alive today because the army erroneously left him out from an aerial tour of Jaffna, where the military plane was shot down and all on board were killed, including a clutch of reporters and photographers.
Instead of being thankful to the defence ministry for not putting him on the fateful flight for whatever reasons, my friend took it as a personal insult that he was not informed about the junket. So he went and quarrelled with the ministry, threatening them with dire consequences if he was ever ignored again on a media outing.
I came across a similarly squeamish fellow journalist in New Delhi last week. Writing in the Times of India he complained that the US Ambassador Robert Blackwill was to blame for “triggering the Great South Asian Panic of 2002”.
My friend believes that it was an exaggeration to claim what much of the world believes, that there existed or still exists a menacing nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan.
So instead of counting their blessings that the American intervention had helped ease off the nuclear tensions somewhat, we are told that foreign diplomats and Indian officials were actually blaming the US embassy, and Ambassador Blackwill in particular, for triggering the panic evacuation of foreign citizens from India and Pakistan.
“There is deep anger in the upper echelons of the Indian government that the ham-handed approach of the US and Britain has encouraged many other countries to follow suit and ask their citizens to leave India,” my Times of India friend declared.
He even quoted an unidentified government official to argue that there were perceptible signs that tension was abating when Washington reissued a warning on Wednesday to its citizens “strongly urging” them to leave India.
An earlier advice of May 31 had only asked them to defer travel to India.
According to the Times of India, an East Asian diplomat confirmed that their own reaction was predictable. “The way we saw it, the British and Americans must know something we did not. So we pressed the panic buttons, too.”
Blackwill’s lack of South Asian experience might have resulted in what he terms the “Great South Asian Panic of 2002”, we were told. Blackwill, it was argued, took the war rhetoric of Indian ministers for real and sent back “alarmist reports to Washington of an imminent Indian attack across the Line of Control”.
An American diplomatic source was quoted as saying that Blackwill had been putting in an enormous effort to deal with the situation but conceded that “he may have mixed up rhetoric and reality somewhere”. All this was taking place even as India was receiving verbal commitments from the US that Pakistan was taking steps to end infiltration.
“Though he has considerable government experience and a sound academic background, Blackwill has simply not had enough time to understand the nuances of South Asian politics,” my friend claimed.
What nuances is my friend talking about? Is he not aware that it was not just the Americans or their so-called Anglo-Saxon conspiracy with Britain to trigger panic in South Asia, but that Russian President Vladimir Putin too had described the recent buildup as reminiscent of the Cuban missile crisis?
Have my journalist friends not heard Jana Krishanamurthy, who guards the BJP’s neanderthal political arsenal, who had claimed with the gnashing of his teeth that India could wipe out Pakistan if Pakistan as much as launched a nuclear attack on India? Krishnamurthy is the head of India’s ruling party for God’s sake.
Nuance? When every officer and their commander in Pakistan brags they are sworn to the use of nuclear weapons if India tries to as much as test its overwhelming conventional superiority against them? Nuance? And Indian forces and their irresponsible civilian minders, threatening to unleash the dogs of war any moment, something that Pakistan says would leave it free to respond as it chooses?
I would have agreed with my Times of India friend had he argued, for example, that Blackwill and his team, instead of caving in to India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear adventurism, should have stuck to the original Strobe Talbott approach of defanging them both. But again it is really not Blackwill’s problem, since it was Strobe Talbott, then US deputy secretary of state, himself, who after extended talks with Jaswant Singh, the Indian external affairs minister since the nuclear tests of May 1998, told the Washington Post that US administration officials “recognize that India is unlikely to abandon its nuclear option, no matter how much pressure they apply”.
Subsequently, a 22-member Independent Task Force that included Richard Haass of the Brookings Institute submitted their report to the then US president on the eve of his visit and cautioned: “It is essential to resist the temptation to place ambitious nuclear-weapons related goals at the centre of US aims. Any attempt to persuade India to eliminate its nuclear arsenal will fail and poison the atmosphere of constructive discussion of other issues given India’s concerns of both China and Pakistan and the inclination of many Indians to associate nuclear weapons with great power status.”
A similar argument was advanced by Indian-born American security analyst Ashley J. Tellis, now a senior adviser to Blackwill in New Delhi. (This fact should, if nothing else does, help my journalist friend understand that Blackwill is not a novice surrounded by ignoramuses).
In Tellis’s voluminous book titled India’s emerging nuclear posture, the seeds of the current indulgent US doctrine can be clearly traced. “Indian nuclear weapons do not pose a threat to US security,” says Tellis indulgently. “But Indian nuclear triumphalism could well damage important US interests,” he declares.
Consequently, a continuing dialogue with India on nuclear issues, according to the Tellis book, must focus on eliminating the prospect of repeated Indian surprises in the strategic realm while helping identify those outcomes both sides could commonly strive towards because they serve US and Indian interests simultaneously.
Tellis must have learnt to his consternation that South Asia is full of scheming surprises and will continue to be no different in the future. And so while it is true that India and Pakistan, as two nuclear upstarts, have shown themselves as extremely irresponsible countries to be allowed to possess nuclear weapons, the Americans cannot be left out of the frame of those who must be held at least partly responsible for allowing this dangerous state of affairs to persist.
That’s partly because of their own self-centred pursuits, for there is no convincing argument against nuclear double standards that are brazenly applied and flaunted by not just the United States but all the P5 countries.
After all just see what the United States has been doing in the middle of a potential nuclear conflagration in South Asia. Its own Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) has been drawing up contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya, Syria, Russia and China.
The US plan, according to an analyst at last month’s meeting of the contact group on the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, is another example of “a hyperpower giddy with its own supremacy and bent on war”.
Said analyst Mark Bromley at the CFSP meeting in Brussels on May 29: “At this time of increasing tension on the ‘Indian’ subcontinent, Washington should be doing all it can to emphasize the inefficacy rather than the efficacy of nuclear weapons. However, the Bush administration seems intent on sending entirely the wrong message and developing new, more usable nuclear weapons. It is incumbent upon Europe to strengthen the voices in Congress who are opposed to this.”
Today the United States is on the verge of making another mistake that other states may yet seek to mimic, one that could have a profound impact upon efforts to limit the use of nuclear weapons.
Washington is currently considering allocating money for the development of new, more usable nuclear weapons for use against hardened and deeply buried targets. The move could dramatically lower the threshold for nuclear use, threaten the nuclear testing moratorium and undermine efforts to control Russia’s arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons.
While the immediate danger does not compare with that posed by India and Pakistan, the long-term threat demands that Europe raises its voice, the CFSP meeting was told.
That’s the real charge against Blackwill and Ashley Tellis among other votaries of the bomb as an option. It is the superpower’s arrogant right to plan to develop and use what it sees as a more “realistically usable” nuclear weapon. Criticizing Blackwill for the fact he may have helped avert a nuclear conflict in South Asia, whose chances many well-informed analysts are inclined to believe still exist, is to accuse him of failing to put my Sri Lankan friend on the doomed plane to Jaffna.
SACH, the recently-relaunched daily, points out that the growers’ protest rallies against acute water shortage in Sindh have been continuing at a time when war threat is looming large on the horizon. At least in the wake of Indian war hysteria and troop buildup at borders, the Pakistan government should have taken immediate steps to restore political stability and national harmony to the country. Alas, in the absence of such measures by Islamabad, the problems confronting the people of Sindh, particularly the water crisis, with the unending rallies demanding their resolution, are persisting while nobody is paying heed to them. This negligence by the authorities is sharpening the already existing sense of deprivation and alienation in the volatile province. Now that according to news reports water position in the rivers has improved with the rainfall in the upcountry and melting of snow at the mountains, Islamabad must ensure due water supply to Sindh so that its thirsty land and people may get some respite.
Tameer-i-Sindh welcomes the approval for the establishment of the Global Change Impact Study Centre (GCISC) which also aims at suggesting measures needed to face the water crisis. With the increasing awareness about the declining water resources, different countries of the world are striving to overcome this problem. However, till recently our country has not been engaged in any activity of water management. With the establishment of the GCISC under the leadership of the prominent scientist Ashfaq Ahmed Khan, it is hoped that this hitherto neglected sector will get due attention. However, this body will be beneficial for the entire country only when it works for water management in every province. Specially the water-starved provinces of Sindh and Balochistan deserve more of its attention since the water crisis there has reached an alarming situation.
Kawish laments the proposed Sindh budget- related reports that the ban on recruitment in the government departments will continue for the next year. The ban was imposed in 1994 and since then the educated youth of the province has been denied government jobs. The government is of the view that it is necessary to continue the ban due to financial reasons. No doubt in the developed countries it is not a government responsibility to provide jobs to citizens but the countries like ours do not have a private sector strong enough to provide massive employment opportunities, and government is also responsible for this drawback. In the under-developed parts of the world, the provision of basic needs and development of an atmosphere conducive for economic growth are among the basic duties of a government. Thus the justification of financial constraints offered by the Sindh government for its inability to provide jobs is not acceptable since it is not a private company that measures everything by financial loss and gain.
Awami Awaz writes that the railways authorities are using force in Sukkur and Jacobabad to evict settlers from the occupied lands, due to which clashes have also taken place between the law enforcers and the protesters. Apart from the question whether lands adjacent to rail tracks belong to the Sindh government or the federal railways department, the people have been settled on such lands for decades. So, if the authorities want to expel them from there, they should first provide them with alternative lands. On the other hand, in Karachi hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens and people from the other provinces have occupied pieces of prime land belonging to the railways, Karachi Port Trust and the revenue department and built there kutcha abadis which have also been provided electricity, gas and other amenities. Isn’t it a discriminatory attitude to begin an anti-encroachment drive in the interior of Sindh but leave untouched the illegally occupied urban lands?
Looking for readable stories one could, with advantage, though with lowered brow, turn to the “three women, three tales” series that an Urdu daily runs in its Sunday magazine. Told without artistry or any literary mannerism, these sad stories of troubled lives compare admirably with the dull harangues, laborious monologues and inane soliloquies that some of our better writers of fiction are dishing out in voluminous editions of stray literary magazines that appear every now and then only to disappear for long intervals. It seems we have run short of stories or life probably has become too uneventful and uninspiring. Or probably our chequered periods of repression have stunted any Mantos that there could have been and banished to other lands or other callings someone who could be a Ghulam Abbas, an Aziz Ahmad or an Asmat Chughtai.
There’s no point in this late lament. If a story of the standard of Kanras or Jab Aankhen Ahenposh Hueen has not been written since those were published, repressive interludes and censors have not been the only reasons. One major factor why good stories are not being written is that good stories are not being read. There were readers in their lakhs when Manto, Bedi, Abbas, Balvant and Krishanchander were writing. A lesser writer of light romance, Krishan Gopal Abid, who wrote for Yusuf Dehlavi’s Shama had a couple of hundred thousand lovesick fans among college girls. In the old Bombay movies heroes could be good-for-nothing writers. That wasn’t entirely unrelated to real life trends. Writers and poets did posses that kind of charisma. In our time all adoration that writers can lay claim to is bestowed by their lawfully wedded wives. This cruel relegation speaks of the sea change in values that has occurred.
Translations from world literature are therefore welcome in this terrible drought of creativity. Col Masood Akhtar Sheikh’s second collection of Turkish short stories has been very well received. Not only that it spans over a century of short fiction but also its direct rendition from the original language gives it a unique position as translations through English versions put a double veil on the face. It’s like making a souffli of aubergines to make biryani, an irreversible recipe. The colonel should now attempt a lengthier conversion, a novel that is representative of modern Turkey.
A collection of Saqiba Rahim’s stories entitled Mohabbat was also introduced at a literary function. These are plain tales of tepid lives, remorse, silent loves, sorrows of good women and men they cannot understand, sad joys of contented hearts and the torture of domestic bliss.
These themes could be material for exciting stories with a little craftsmanship but Saqiba Sahiba chooses to recount them in the manner of tales, straight narratives direct from the impassioned heart. This is the way with women. Natural story tellers they are and if you find one who doesn’t carry a tale or two you could look there for male oppression that is preventing the flowering of full womanhood or probably a kinky dna.
But story telling is one thing and story writing another. Unless it be a symbolist, abstractionist, stream of consciousness junk, it has to be about someone or something and must be constructed with economy for maximum effect. All crap has to be cut out. In the latest issue of Adbiyat, a periodical of the Academy of Letters, Ejaz Ahmad Faruqui’s Ek Nukta-e- Iman Ki Tafseer is an example of a good story well told. Based probably on the structure of Qissa-e-chahar Dervesh, it is about seeking God’s forgiveness in difficult situations. Faruqui has made a most effective use of a favorite prayer of Hazrat Ali’s (KW) in the clever construction of this story.
Adbiyat: The current issue devotes a section to a scintillating selection of Zafer Iqbal’s ghazal, critical essays on Faiz, Hanif Fauq, Manto, Imtiaz Ali Taj and Sheikh Ayaz. Sadiq Nasim’s recollections of Maulana Abdul Majid Salik captures interesting glimpses of Lahore. It’s a sleek account. A brief survey of Pashtu literature in Balochistan by Ali Kameel Qizilbash gives a bird eye view of trends since Independence. The ghazal and nazm sections present 59 poets. This would put us somewhere behind the Zulus, every man among whom must compose a poem before his passing into the next world.