| November 16, 2002 | Saturday | Ramazan 10, 1423 |
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Urdu university
Better roads
CONFIRMING widespread press speculation in the past few days, a ‘forward bloc’ has come into being in the People’s Party. It will serve as a useful tool both in shoring up a coalition that excludes the PPP and in blocking the party’s efforts to be part of a coalition. Its formation has been announced on the eve of the inaugural session of the new National Assembly and amidst reports that the PML(Q)/GNA and the MMA are attempting to put together a government. The military’s carrot-and-stick policy, which created the PML(Q), has worked again. One of the members of the bloc has said it has been set up in the “supreme national interest” — that much abused phrase which has lost all meaning because it has been so often invoked to justify what runs counter to the national interest. Rank opportunism will likely be a better description of the factors and considerations that have prompted the 10 PPP legislators to break away from the parent party and that may impel others to follow suit. However, it is an embarrassing development for the party leadership and yet another reminder to all political leaders of the brittleness of the groups they lead.
The PPP has stood up remarkably well to sustained persecution whenever it has been in opposition. It has refused to be wished away and remains a party with the largest popular base, a tribute to the original (later to be myopically blurred) vision of its founder, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Nevertheless, it has suffered from desertions earlier. Dr Mubashir Hasan, Rafi Raza, Jatoi, Khar, Leghari, Murtaza Bhutto himself, Sherpao — the list is not a short one. It cannot be said that all those who have left the party did so out of selfish motives. Yet, the party leadership never made any serious effort to understand the reasons that led to disenchantment among many of its leading figures. In the present case also, lack of a consistent and coherent policy on whether to seek a place in government or sit in the opposition may have made some of its legislators impatient and weary.
But the PPP’s shortcomings are not peculiar to it. Except perhaps for the religious groupings, which have their own obscurantist agenda, all other parties have displayed a strange reluctance to adopt a principled position on issues of common concern and stick to it. Their leaderships have been a collection of powerful feudal, hereditary or wealthy individuals with little to distinguish one from the other. They have cynically indulged in power games and, while extolling the virtues of democracy, have been strongly averse to plurality of opinion within their own parties: many have been only too willing to become turncoats at the beck and call of dictatorial regimes. Almost all parties are run in an authoritarian manner by their leaders, which often provides a convenient excuse for those lusting for power and pelf to defect. Most parties produce wishy-washy policy briefs at election times, but the manifestoes are then left to gather dust in party cupboards. Their failure to acquire a sense of direction has been part of the failure of democracy. Beginning today, a new test looms for the parties: if they persist in their waywardness, we all know who will have the last laugh.
THE establishment of the Federal Urdu University of Arts, Sciences and Technology in Islamabad through a presidential ordinance, will go a long way in facilitating researchers and scholars working in their respective fields using Urdu as their preferred medium. The ordinance also makes two of the existing colleges in Karachi — the FG Urdu Science and Arts Colleges — constituent institutions of the university. Together, the three institutions will now have the broader mandate, the charter and the resources to function like an autonomous university offering recognized professional degrees, scholarships and grants and establishing centres of excellence in various academic disciplines in the three faculties of arts, sciences and technology. All these measures augur well for the development of the national language as a vehicle for modern knowledge and learning in various fields. But the actual usefulness and job market potential of the degrees to be issued by the university in the years to come will remain a question mark as long as the current trend of globalization and reliance on English as the language of business and administration remains dominant.
The ordinance establishing the university does not take this anomaly into account. The need to develop Urdu into a progressive modern language of the future and providing the existing scholars with the ways and means to do so can hardly be overstated. But an Urdu university with a specific and defined mandate and adequate resources would have been a far more sustainable and meaningful proposition. For example, the new university could concentrate on promoting research and scholarship. It could help coordinate the efforts being made at various centres for the development of Urdu, and it could also help produce Urdu teachers in scientific disciplines for schools and colleges. This might be a better direction to follow than merely producing highly qualified professionals who can expect few openings in the current job market.
THE Karachi city government has handed over road construction machinery to town administrations to begin the much-needed task of road repair and maintenance. It’s about time this was done. The Sindh governor has hoped that the machinery will be put to good use to improve the city’s road network. Karachi’s roads — even in some of the most affluent neighbourhoods — are in urgent need of repair and recarpeting. The city’s residents want to see their tax money being put to good use and this includes the ease of travel on roads that provide for a reasonably safe and comfortable passage.
Experience of road-building and public construction work has shown that getting state-of-the-art machinery is not enough. It is important that such equipment be properly maintained. In the past we have seen buses imported from Europe fall into disuse because of bad maintenance and official neglect. The other important issue relates to the quality of workmanship. For a change let us have roads that do not develop cracks and potholes only a few months after recarpeting. The city government and other municipal authorities that execute road development projects must surely have some idea that contractors use substandard material in construction. In fact, the finished work is often so shoddy that some roads have to be relaid over and over again in a short period of time. This might suit contractors, but it represents a big drain on scarce funds. Contractors found guilty of using substandard material should be blacklisted, and officials who repeatedly let such shoddy road development work happen should be held accountable.