December 17, 2003	Wednesday	Shawwal 22, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, Dec 16: Participants of a conference here on Tuesday called for an interdisciplinary approach for collective promotion of social sciences and humanities.

The first national conference on “State of social sciences and humanities: current scenario and emerging trends”, has been organized by the QAU under the auspices of the national committee on development of social sciences and humanities of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) with financial assistance of Unesco.

Talking to Dawn, chairperson of the committee on the development of social sciences and vice-chancellor Fatima Jinnah Women University Dr Najma Najam said “with the help of this conference we have been able to gather distinguished social scientists at one platform so that they can share their ideas”.

In other countries, social scientists are consulted at the highest level of policy-making but in Pakistan they are considered lesser beings, she said.

She said to bring social sciences at par with other disciplines, social scientists have to work on new ideas, concepts and methodologies.

Dr Arifa Farid of the University of Karachi said Pakistani academia should participate in the task of liberating their society from inhuman and enslaving presuppositions and reconstruct the discipline of Philosophy within a broad religio-humanistic framework.

In this context, salient features of the Islamic eclecticism and philosophical bases of morality and ethics have been explored, she added.

Dr Bushra Hamid of Peshawar University emphasised the role of institutional reform to bring about desirable behavioural change in academic discipline of business administration.

Dr Najma said, “we are gathered here today to initiate a process of rekindling social sciences and humanities which in this era of globalized commercialization, of knowledge-driven economies seems to have been placed further on the back shelf.

A paper on state of economics: current scenario and emerging trends presented by Pervez Tahir, chief economist Planning Commission, examined the current status of economics in Pakistan both in terms of education and research as well as provision of prognosis of future trends.

Dr Tahir talked about the hiatus that existed between subjects as it were taught and its applicability to the real life situations in the country. In the absence of material incentives for teachers and outdated curricula, social sciences are on the decline, he argued.

Dr Sadiq Ali Gill said public administration in the next decade shall have to be reacted, renewed and revitalised so as to meet challenges and the task of future which are to accelerate development in the developing countries to make effective use of their resources.

Anjum Zia of Lahore College for Women University said trends in Mass Communication were closely related to politics and communication technology as it not only affected the media product and their use but also changed the structure of media organizations and employment patterns.

Dr Dushka Sayed, coordinator of the conference, told Dawn that we had to take this initiative beyond the conference level to bring positive changes at the grassroots level.