Challenges in the education sector

Never before has the education ministry and the education sector gained so much prominence. Last week, the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) and the World Food Programme (WFP) committed $27 million for the education of girls in this country, while the US ambassador to Pakistan announced that her country is likely to commit (another) $200 million towards the education sector.

Apart from these latest pledges totalling $227 million made to the new education minister, Lt-Gen (retired) Javed Ashraf Qazi, at least $565 million had already been committed to various projects in the education sector by various multilateral organizations and donor agencies during the tenure of the previous education minister Zobaida Jalal.

These donors include the World Bank ($34.4 million), USAID ($100 million), ADB ($280 million), DFID ($36 million), Unicef ($12 million), Norad ($22 million) and the European Commission ($81 million). (Figures are from a booklet by the Ministry of Education, Government of Pakistan, dated March 2004 on Public- Private Partnerships in the Education Sector: Policy, Options, Incentive Package and Recommendations.)

But then, never before has the education sector been faced with the kind of challenges it is faced with, viz., to meet the UN Millennium Development target of universal primary education and the elimination of gender disparity in schooling by 2015, and to reform the national curriculum in the government schools/colleges and in the Madressahs.

According to a 2002 Unesco Education For All monitoring report, Pakistan was listed, together with India and other African countries, as those which were in serious risk of not achieving the UN goals of universal primary education and the elimination of gender disparity in primary and secondary education by 2015.

This pessimistic view about Pakistan's performance in the education sector has changed little since, as evident from the fact that participants at a Unesco workshop on literacy in Islamabad two weeks ago had expressed the apprehension that Pakistan was unlikely to attain the desired literacy goals.

Since the education ministry is promoting the concept of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) as the anchor of its reforms to improve access and quality of education, the performance in the education sector would naturally depend in large part on the performance of these PPPs.

The PPP policy, as its name suggests and as spelt out in the above-mentioned March 2004 booklet by the Ministry of Education, seeks to actively involve and support the private sector and civil society organizations in the delivery of education.

One major PPP formed under the directive of the president of Pakistan is the National Commission for Human Development, which aims to help the government achieve its educational objectives.

The government has enacted a package of incentives for the private sector education institutions established under the PPP programme. The incentives include the provision of free land or on concessional rates in the rural areas, electricity on domestic tariff rates, and concessional financing for establishing rural schools through the respective educational foundations, credit through Khushali Bank and other such financial institutions. Goods imported by or donated to such educational institutions are also exempted from customs duties and sales tax.

Much of the funding for the education sector granted by donor agencies is being allocated to the establishment of schools through the PPPs. But how successful the ministry of education will be in maximizing the use of these funds to swiftly impact on education depends upon its ability to provide the necessary coordination, leadership and drive to steer the PPPs towards achieving the desired targets. As the ministry of education itself has admitted, the task of creating and managing such partnerships is not easy.

Another major government-led public-private partnership initiative involves mainstreaming the 8,000 or so informal Madressahs by equipping these religious non-profit institutions with a core education curriculum of mathematics, science, social studies, English and IT.

The educational foundations under the ministry of education and the departments of education are charged with implementing an incentive programme through the introduction of these subjects in the Madressahs, the training of teachers, the provision of textbooks, and the upgrading of facilities like libraries and IT labs.

A major challenge faced by the education ministry in mainstreaming the Madressahs and revising their curriculum is in dispelling the notion that the current leadership is implementing a foreign agenda.

Earlier attempts at improving the quality of the national schools through curriculum revision and textbook development had already mired the former education minister Zobaida Jalal in a heated controversy with the religious political leaders.

The government has asserted that mainstreaming the Madressahs is aimed at giving Madressahs graduates access to subjects and skills that will allow them options for gainful employment.

This necessitates simultaneous improvement in economic opportunities in the country to cater to graduates from both the national schools and the reformed Madressahs. Foreign agenda or no foreign agenda, there can be no argument against the fact that human development is the anchor of any economic revival policy.

Finally, to correct the impression somewhat created by the flood of foreign funds, technical expertise and other resources into the education sector that it is the foreign donors who seem to be more urgently concerned about improving literacy levels in Pakistan, the government will need to be seen to be putting more of its own effort and resources into the task.

This can be done by allocating resources to the primary and secondary education sectors that are comparable with what the government has been recently pumping into the tertiary sector.

Nothing but a lovers' quarrel

The US State Department brought out its International Religious Freedom Report for 2004 on Sept 15. The following day, India's quasi-fascist Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) leader K.S. Sudarshan described the United States as his country's worst enemy.

And, on Sept 19, the Bajrang Dal, the storm-trooper of the Hindutva family, of which the RSS is the ideological patron, was set to kick off its most ambitious recruitment campaign to induct 3,000,000 youth.

All armed with daggers, they would want Hindus to worship. Their main area of operations would be the socially vulnerable tribes-people, to ostensibly reclaim them as Hindus from Christianity.

Are we looking at a confrontation brewing between India's powerful Hindutva right and the United States? No. That doesn't look very likely. The Indian Diaspora in the United States remains the biggest single source of funds for the Hindutva hate groups.

The United States and the RSS also have a common foe in the politically influential communists in India and so they necessarily have to stay together if they are to check the growing leftist influence in mainstream politics.

Of course, the most potent glue that would keep the two quarrelling lovers together is their common mistrust of Muslims in the battle against terrorism. The Hindutva forces would continue to back the proposed triad of the United States, Israel and India as a buffer against real or imaginary terrorism.

So what was it in the US State Department's annual report on religious freedoms that forced the strange outburst by Mr Sudarshan? The reports says that during most of the period it covers, the Indian government was led by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

"The leading party in the coalition was the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a Hindu nationalist party with links to Hindu extremist groups that have been implicated in violent acts against Christians and Muslims."

But that paragraph was there ad verbatim in the 2003 US report. So that could not be the reason for last week's outburst. Yes, the 2004 report recalls that in May President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam invited Dr Manmohan Singh, a member of Congress Party, to form a coalition government led by the UPA to replace the NDA, which had been in power since 1998.

The UPA pledged to respect the country's traditions of secular government and religious tolerance, and to pay particular attention to the rights of religious minorities.

Yes, the American report celebrates the fact that "Dr Singh, a Sikh, became the first member of a religious minority to be prime minister. As President Kalam is a Muslim and the president of the governing Congress party (Sonia Gandhi) is a Christian, three of the most important politicians in India are members of religious minority communities."

Is this what may have prompted Dr Sudarshan's reaction? Yes, it is jarring to Hindutva ears to be hearing so much praise for secular ideals. But this could have only irritated the RSS chief, not worked up a rage as seems to be the case here.

Is it possible then that he felt jilted by something the United States did? There may be some clues for us to glean Washington's changed demeanour towards Hindutva from last year.

Until last year, the United States was, at best, equivocal in its response to the Gujarat anti-Muslim campaign. According to The New York Times, the only public remarks about Gujarat that the then US Ambassador, Robert Black will, made in the aftermath of the violence was: "All our hearts go out to the people who were affected by this tragedy. I don't have anything more to say than that."

In contrast, after suspected terrorists killed 24 Kashmiris in late March that year, Mr Black will was quick to issue a statement condemning "the ghastly murder of innocent men, women, and children". Mr Black will did not even visit Gujarat subsequent to the pogrom.

The American National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was asked by The Hindu newspaper about "why the United States has not been forthcoming in its criticism". She responded that the BJP "government is leading India well, and it will do the right thing".

Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Christina Rocca did term the events in Gujarat 'really horrible', but that was in response to a pointed question by this correspondent. She neglected to assign any blame.

When US Secretary of State Colin Powell visited India in July of 2002 on a peace mission, he made no mention of Gujarat. The European Union, on the other hand, likened the Gujarat situation to apartheid and said that it had similarities with Nazi Germany of the 1930s.

Apparently, the US government had deemed it more important to keep India on its side in the "war on terrorism" than to risk a row over even brazen human rights violations.

Felice D. Gaer, chairman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom noted the official apathy. "There's been no public comment by the administration on Gujarat other than in response to a direct question. The ambassador hasn't visited the region. Senior officials are not interested in holding anyone responsible for the violence."

In fact Assistant Secretary of State Rocca claimed on March 22 last year at a Senate hearing on South Asia that 'much action' has been taken by the Indian government. "The legal system in India is agonizingly slow and that gives the impression that nothing is happening," she claimed.

"But the fact of the matter is that they did take action and they are continuing to take action," she said. The "United States has spoken out loudly and often on the terrible events of Gujarat, and it did not in any way get a pass from anywhere in the world, much less from the Bush Administration." All this was a tissue of disinformation, to put it mildly.

It is often said that the United States does not have permanent friends, but that it has permanent interests. Mr Sudarshan may be finding it difficult to appreciate the wisdom of this adage. But all he has to do is to find a way to take power again.

He would find out in no time that the US administration is quite prepared to overlook the ominous plot being hatched by the Bajrang Dal, with Mr Sudarshan's blessings no doubt.

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Delhi's love-struck couples better brace themselves for more trouble. Armed with the recommendation of a local leader, a club of eunuchs, who tap people for money, has recently sought an audience with senior officials of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).

Their 'demand' - allow eunuchs to collect money from people, especially couples, from lovers' most favourite haunts like the Old Fort and Safdarjung Tomb.

"How else will they earn their livelihood? They should be allowed for two to three hours daily at the monuments," said Amin Khan, vice-chairman of Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee's minority cell. The eunuchs were armed with Mr Khan's letter when they met ASI's Delhi head A.K. Sinha. Delhi's sprawling parks and mediaeval monuments are popular with the city's burgeoning population of young couples who do not have the budget to go to a movie or a restaurant every day.

Mai Kolachi: what is going on?

The reclamation of land along one side of the Mai Kolachi Expressway has been going on for a long time now. Just two years back, left of the expressway (as one drives from Clifton towards the port area) was a mini-sanctuary for pink flamingos and other migratory birds which came to this part of the world from Central Asia and eastern Russia.

The shallow water provided a feeding ground for the birds and to see pink flamingos in such a place, with the city's skyline (or whatever there is of it) as the opposite view, was quite a sight.

However, over the next many months, an army of bulldozers moved in and began to 'reclaim' the land, destroying the habitat of these birds. When the reclamation was being carried out, the matter was reported in the media, including by this newspaper.

In fact, the Karachi Port Trust even clarified its position on the matter, saying that the land in question was not under its control but that of the KPT Officers Cooperative Housing Society (OCHS).

The matter rested there and the bulldozers did not stop. As the months went by, the refuge of the birds disappeared. Over the past few weeks, a brick wall, presumably part of an enclosure, has also been constructed on this reclaimed land.

On September 11 the Board of Revenue, Sindh, came out with a public notice which reads as follows: "It is notified for the general public in their own interest that the KPT after reclamation of 130-00 acres Sindh Government land has acted illegally to the KPT OCHS (sic).

KPT has encroached on the government land for which a suit no. 735/2001 is pending in the Honourable High Court of Sindh at Karachi." The rest of the notice said that the matter was yet to be decided and that any "individual, company, firm or purchaser" of plots in the housing society would be doing so that their own cost and risk.

The question that immediately comes to mind is that why did it take the Sindh government so long to come out with a categorical statement on this controversial matter? The reclamation has been going on for the past two years, which means that it took place while the case was pending in the high court.

And it isn't as if it was happening in a remote part of the city, away from the public view. How could Sindh government officials not see what was going on? Shouldn't this public notice have been issued a long time ago, when the housing society was being floated, when buyers were being solicited for its plots and when land was being reclaimed? Now that when even a wall has been built on part of the area under dispute, the provincial government comes out with a 'warning' to the public.

Desalination anyone?

Will the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board, following the example of the Defence Housing Authority, establish a desalination plant on the coast. Its advantages would be multifarious.

A desalination plant will reduce water scarcity and the quality of water supplied to consumers will be better than what we get from the Indus, whose supply is not free from pollution. The plant will also generate electricity, which the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation should be only too pleased to buy from the KWSB.

It will save fuel that is consumed by water tankers, which means a saving of foreign exchange. With the reduction in the number of tankers, there will be less pollution in the air and slightly less traffic on the road. At night the water tankers and oil tankers drive quite recklessly, so it will reduce the number of accidents.

Then the wear and tear of the roads near and around the hydrants will also be reduced. Look at the road that connects Maymar Square roundabout with Sir Shah Suleman Road in Gulshan-i-Iqbal, a part of which is always in a state of disrepair. A large number of civic problems could be solved, if the KWSB builds a desalination plant.

A tandoor for everyone

"If every family in Pakistan gave away a fistful of wheat flour to charity, no one would have to starve" is Parveen Saeed's simple formula for overcoming the problem of food shortage. But do people really go hungry in Karachi - a city where one sees scores of shrines, seminaries, mosques and restaurants doling out food to the destitute every day?

Apparently they do. A survey jointly conducted by the Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology and the Raana Liaquat Ali Khan Government College of Home Economics in former District Central some time back showed that food insecurity was very high (81 per cent) among the very low- and low-income households.

Sitting at her small Khana Ghar in Ghuda ki Basti-3, 25 kilometres from the city centre, Ms Saeed said that the place could provide two wholesome meals a day to about 90 people.

As we helped ourselves to a tasty vegetable dish and a freshly baked tandoori nan - costing us a mere Rs2 - she said that while the eatery was essentially a take-away restaurant, food was served on an old divan or a rickety bench for those who wanted to eat out. Those who are too poor to pay for their food enjoy a free meal.

Ms Saeed started a project of similar nature in Surjani Town, but it was closed down when the city government started laying sewers. "I did incur a loss because I had to set up a place in Khuda ki Basti-3 from scratch, but I find that in this locality the number of poor families is high.

Contrary to what people generally believe, an eatery for very poor people could be established with little capital and could be run on a sustained basis. But I haven't been able to sell the idea to other people," she said.

Ms Saeed argues that eateries for low-income families could be run on a tight budget. She has employed two people - a chef and an errand boy - with wages of Rs150 and Rs100 a week, respectively. She pays a monthly rent of Rs500 to a local non-governmental organization whose space she occupies.

"We cook three kilos of lentils or about eight kilos of vegetables every day. We use 20 kilos of wheat flour and every fortnight, if we can manage, we have meat curry on the menu. We could do much more if every family in Pakistan gave away a fistful of flour to charity," she contends.

Failed scheme

After the failure of the city government's Adopt-A-Park scheme, the next project to fall through is that of bus shelters which was launched amidst much fanfare by the city fathers some time back. The scheme proposed building hundreds of bus shelters across Karachi which would house a shop, a toilet and some amenities like phones and lighted areas.

It was a good idea because it would have provided facilities to the travelling public and employment to a large number of people. It seems that the private sector did not feel too enamoured of the idea and refused to get involved. One reason could be that plans approved by the city government were based on poor designing and were found to be too expensive to sponsor and maintain.

One architect said that the bus shelters were designed in such a way that they would attract encroachers. This scheme also did not address one of the major problems afflicting the city - the need for buses to stop only at bus stops.

email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com.