| December 22, 2002 | Sunday | Shawwal 17, 1423 |
A journalist and friend: OBITUARY
MOST of us still have not received our computerized national identity cards (CNICs) for all that is being pompously said by the National Database Registration Authority (Nadra), and the point that the majority have still not applied, and that all the promises and deadlines made have lapsed smoothly, is to be underlined. Not overlooked please!
Letters to the editor of this and other dailies reflect what one such resident of Karachi has said in this daily on Friday that Nadra has “made a mockery of professional performance.” Perhaps that is not the case. It is only what one other resident cynically describes as a case of “unrealistic ambitions” of the organization. It did not take into account public opinion and the quality of governance that can exist and does prevail in the land.
The manner in which many of us have had our application forms stated lost by Nadra is amazing, and even funny! If one was not to laugh or be amused at the inefficiency that public dealing private and public sector departments in this country offer it would drive one insane. It would lead to violence, says one irate Karachiite.
There appeared a large photograph in a national daily during this week which curiously has remained outside the ambit of most agitated conversations that we have about the state of our lives. This is what the caption read. “These computerized national identity cards prepared by Nadra were found scattered along the bed of a stormwater-cum-sewerage drain in Shadman Town No 2 on Friday.” Now wherever this blessed Shadman Town No 2 be, and whoever the blessed residents be, the Nadra cards were dumped there. Did it remind me of those bad old days when postal mail, (Eid cards especially) were found dumped in such drains presumably because postmen did not consider that mail significant enough?
This recent photograph had me thinking about an editorial that had appeared in another national daily which wrote about “Paying for Nadra’s inefficiency,” and take this one paragraph which gives an insight into what appeared to be happening. It reads: “A news report revealed that more than a million persons, mostly those who had become eligible to vote as per the government decision to lower the voting age to 18 years, would be unable to exercise their voting right because Nadra had messed up things for them. Nadra had assigned some private companies the task of collecting ID card registration forms from the local offices to pass on to the central Nadra facility. As it turns out some 1.7 million of these forms are missing.” A tale of missing forms and thrown-away CNI cards. But not quite evidently.
Look at the positive cheery side of the story, the good news (we must always look for?) is that Nadra has delivered the identity card to Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali at his residence in Rojhan Jamali. This was done during the week (17th December). There were other impressive details of the good work done in the largest province of the country, by Nadra of course. Well done?
When you hear that the prime minister has finally got his new identity card it makes you think. Did he not get this ID card before he became the prime minister? why? It is so obvious why the prime minister was given this special VIP handling. It is so obvious why the VIPs in this society are provided special handling, despite the strong public opinion that keeps on protesting that this is being at the cost of the common man.
Thoughts immediately turn to the recent visit of the prime minister to Karachi, his first as the country’s new premier. Once again Sharea Faisal and other roads and arteries that he was to travel on, were closed in total disregard of the well-known inconvenience that it caused to the public. No one cares? Really?
A letter to the editor appeared in this daily, saying “Karachiites had been quite at peace for three years until recently as there was no prime minister in the country and they did not have to face tormenting difficulties which are caused by the movement of such VIPs and VVIPs in this city.”
This citizen has complained of the problems that were faced by the citizens in various areas, and how his company’s vehicle was “commandeered by the Madadgar force for community service,” and the gentleman has referred to the misery and hardship that the people face when such visits take place.
Why are roads closed for security reasons is a question and a theme that are repeatedly discussed, and the general public fails to see any wisdom or vision in this measure as it totally ignores the ground reality that people suffer. The road to the Sindh Assembly and the adjoining areas were closed and it made one contemplate the kind and quality of democracy that has come, where the very people who are elected by the people, are the ones to be protected. From whom? The people. Why? Strange indeed is the face of our city as the degree of insecurity grows steadily, which gives rise to higher and sharper levels of visible security measures. We have written in the past of how armed private security guards have become integral to our lives, personal, professional ... everywhere. But the way in which terrorism is unfolding its agenda, particularly in the Sindh capital, the network of the private and official security is suffocating. Inescapable really?
The other day I walked past a five-star hotel and crossed the road to go to another pavement, and then go into the posh hotel located on the opposite side. I walked passed at least three security men who had their guns in firing positions. There were numerous other policemen and guards in the area in addition to these three. I thought to myself what if their guns were to go off? I answered myself: I would be dead!” That is it.
But that’s not it. One hopes that now with democracy, controlled or otherwise, being back, the presence of security will be modest, reasonable, and not on the higher side. There is good reason to believe that at times the security measures taken are overdone and are detrimental to the image of the government and the ultimate democratization of society.
But then as one says this, and takes into account the insecurity that is woven into the fabric of our lives, and the unemployment and the political divide that we have, it makes you confront the dilemma that we are caught up in.
Does that mean, therefore, that these road closures and uniformed men with guns pointing at citizens like you and me are some facets of the fear that we have to accept gladly?
THE first inkling of Naseer Farooki’s death came in an editorial in The Nation on Friday. The sad event was corroborated in an article the next day by Justice Nasim Hasan Shah, mourning the death of his friend.
This has been a tremendous shock for Naseer Farooki’s many friends and former colleagues, in Dawn and elsewhere. He had been through so many scrapes and come out so totally unfazed and unrepentant from each episode that he had almost seemed unsinkable.
Naseer had started life as a journalist, working with Dawn and the now long defunct Civil & Military Gazette. Many of us had come in contact with him when he had drifted away from journalism, but kept in regular touch with journalists. He would walk into the offices of The Pakistan Times in Lahore, and some of us, including the writer and columnist Khalid Hasan, had a great time concocting letters to the editor against the regular dose of ideological nonsense dished out by the late Z. A. Suleri in the PT’s columns.
We would gather at Shezan Continental where you could have several cups of tea for just a rupee and then stroll up and down The Mall which had become a kind of club where you would invariably on an evening encounter Shakir Ali and Sibte Hasan taking their daily constitutional. It was a different kind of Lahore then, and Naseer Farooki was so much a part of it.
He briefly ran the Afro-Asian Book Club and organized a successful Asian film festival, which also showed Satayjit Ray’s Mahanagar. During the same period, he wrote the political satire, Snakes and Ladders, which lampooned Altaf Gauhar, Ayub Khan’s powerful information guru. Sometimes he could be unneccesarily harsh and personal.
During the last days of Yahya Khan, he had come up with a strange draft of a unitary constitution that he wanted the government to adopt and some of whose provisions bore a rattling resemblance to the Tanvir Naqvi dispensation that we now have.
At some point, Naseer Farooki disappeared from our radar screens, and all we knew was that he was into big business and the big time, commuting between London and the Gulf. There was a renewal of friendship in the late 70s when he was living with his wife, Niloufer, and his three daughters in Knightsbridge in London. He seemed prosperous and though himself abstemious even kept a fine bottle of port for his friends. He was a member of one of London’s fashionable gaming clubs frequented by Arabs, and apparently won and lost wads of money.
He would invite his friends, and then insist on having the club’s Rolls drop them at home, when they had to tip the driver more than they would have paid for a taxi.
There were some court cases also at that time, but Naseer Farooki was never deterred from running into another adventure. He was like that.—Tahir Mirza