| May 16, 2005 | Monday | Rabi-us-Sani 7, 1426 |
A chain of food parks
FCC: days long since forgotten
“I’M NOT sure what weapons will be used in World War III, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones,” said Albert Einstein. There are of course other valid reasons also to be wary of nuclear weapons. History has shown, when the time comes, nuclear prowess can neither save governments that harness it nor ensure the survival of nation states that exult in its false security. India marked the seventh year of its misplaced nuclear tests last week. One instructive way of looking at the event could be that it was the first anniversary of the1998 tests when their author, the mighty BJP, was wallowing in oblivion, worsened by a debilitating factious war.
IT is a shame that we can’t even seem to be able to manage properly one simple food park — the Melody Food Park — which was opened in August 2001 much to the culinary delight of citizens of the twin cities of Islamabad-Rawalpindi. Nearly four years later now, instead of thriving and flourishing, the first ever food park in the capital is practically under threat of closure because of controversy regarding the appointments and salary payments of a hundred over waiters employed there.
True it has taken six scorching long years for the mindlessly jingoist party to be given the boot. But the fact is that it was thrown out in a shock verdict by the very people it pretended to protect from goodness knows what. In any case there is ample hint here that by conducting the May 11 and 13 tests in Pokharan, the BJP was neither able to endear itself to the popular will of India nor did it become apolitically invincible party it had set out to become.
For lesser mortals like Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who could not resist the lure of tit-for-tat patriotic fervour, the lesson from history was harsher still. His nemesis came in military uniform to hoist him by his own petard. Mr Sharif could survive in power for no more than one mere anniversary of his rush of blood. Worse, his post Chaghai months were tainted for the most part by political miscalculations as also by a widely condemned military brinkmanship that came with the Kargil standoff. Closer home, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had to use an unpopular emergency route to rule India in the summer of 1976, exactly two years after she inaugurated India’s first atom bomb.
Here was a mighty leader, deified as Durga, the goddess of power, by Mr Vajpayee no less for her part in the creation of Bangladesh in1971. What then forced her to rush into a nuclear test in 1974? If it was for the good of the country as everyone claims the people of India seem to have missed the point. For they summarily rejected her when she did hold the elections in 1977. Mr. Vajpayee too had lost three key state elections for his party — in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi — within four months of Pokharan II. If the two self-deluding leaders of South Asia – Messrs Sharif and Vajpayee — who bequeathed to their nations a dangerous and risky nuclear legacy have been dispatched to political oblivion, the fiendish illusion of nuclear weapons had conjured fatal tricks even earlier. The crumbling into pieces of the mighty Soviet Union less than a decade before the advent of South Asia nuclear upstarts remains a prime example of the hollow prowess of nuclear weapons. Here was a superpower, with 3,800 strategic offensive nuclear warheads in its arsenal, that lay spread-eagled. Is the United States with 4,500 such warheads any more secure as a nation because of its nuclear arsenal?
Robert McNamara, secretary of state with President Kennedy, was privileged to have a cockpit view of the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 when the world, according to him, “came within a hair’s breadth of nuclear disaster.”
Today Mr McNamara has become a staunch critic of what he admits is his country’s hypocritical approach to nuclear disarmament at the ongoing NPT review conference. He feels that even as the United States goes around prohibiting some selected countries from acquiring nuclear weapons, many are not sure if the United States has a legitimate argument.
“Keeping such large numbers of weapons, and maintaining them on hair-trigger alert, are potent signs that the United States is not seriously working toward the elimination of its arsenal and raises troubling questions as to why any other state should restrain its nuclear ambitions,” Mr. McNamara observes in the latest Foreign Policy journal.
Mr McNamara worked on issues relating to US and Nato nuclear strategy and war plans for more than 40 years. “During that time, I have never seen a piece of paper that outlined a plan for the United States or Nato to initiate the use of nuclear weapons with any benefit for the United States or Nato. I have made this statement in front of audiences, including Nato defence ministers and senior military leaders, many times. No one has ever refuted it.”
As India and Pakistan continue to gloat over their supposedly foolproof nuclear command and control system, Mr. McNamara indicates that these could be tall claims. He illustrates the point with examples to show how nearly impossible it could be to avoid accident seven for the more experienced nuclear powers. “Only a few years ago did we learn that the four Soviet submarines trailing the US Naval vessels near Cuba each carried torpedoes with nuclear warheads,” he recalls. “Each of the sub commanders had the authority to launch his torpedoes. The situation was even more frightening because, as the lead commander recounted to me, the subs were out of communication with their Soviet bases, and they continued their patrols for four days after Khrushchev announced the withdrawal of the missiles from Cuba.” Mr. Vajpayee complained recently that as former premier he has not much work to do. Well, as he wades through the political equivalent of a self-inflicted nuclear winter, Mr. Vajpayee would do well to ponder the disastrous consequences of his indiscretions of May 1998, which still reverberate menacingly across a seriously worried world.
INDIA and Pakistan have been named as two of the seven countries sending under-aged children to the United Arab Emirates as camel jockeys, a news report says. An agreement has been signed between the interior ministry and UNICEF to rehabilitate the child jockeys. The other five countries identified as exporting camel jockeys besides India and Pakistan are Sudan, Bangladesh, Eritrea, Somalia and Mauritania. Email: jawednaqvi@gmail.com
Such a controversy would not have arisen if the contractual agreements with the waiters had been properly decided beforehand and implemented accordingly. Apparently, this was not the case.
What seems to be lacking is the determination to make a success out of Melody Food Park. The initial idea of adding live musical and cultural performances in the evenings to attract more customers to the food park has also evaporated into thin air.
If this is the state of Islamabad’s first food park, how well can we expect the second one that is supposed to be coming up in Blue Areas to be run?
Perhaps, we could take a lesson or two in food park management and operations from Singapore, the island republic which our prime minister and his entourage visited during their recent Asean tour. Singapore has developed a specialized expertise in the management of food parks (or food court as it is known in Singapore). If there was a world statistic on the number of food courts per square kilometre, Singapore would probably have the highest density of food courts!
No decent shopping centre in Singapore is without a food court. This is a self-service centralized eating place located usually in the basements of the numerous shopping centres dotted across the island.
These food courts are well decorated and airconditioned, each comprising anything between 10 to 30 individual stalls selling a wide variety of local and international cuisine. The food courts’ counter staff are well-trained in standard procedures of food preparation and display, as well as in the management of customers.
These food courts, which are usually jam-packed with customers during lunch and dinner times, are run by several chain food court firms, the two most famous of which are Food Junction and Kopitiam (a term meaning coffee shop in the local dialect).
So successful are these food courts in Singapore that they provide very tough competition to the international fastfood chains, like KFC, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Deli France, which are also located in the same shopping centres but not within the food court premises.
An article last year in a Singapore newspaper featuring the chief executive officer (CEO) of one of the two major food-court chains described him as a very wealthy man who did not need the job materially but was in it simply because he found the task of making his company thrive, a challenging one. The CEO’s daily work routine began at 6.30am with him sitting at one of his food courts sipping his morning coffee and chatting with the cleaners. He did this because he found the feedback from the cleaners very useful in helping him to improve the facilities and the environment in his food courts.
But food courts did not exist in Singapore four decades ago. The trend then was the roadside mobile hawker selling his food on a bicycle cart. The government banned these roadside hawkers as part of its urban development policy in the 1960s because these hawkers were hard to licence and their level of hygiene could not be monitored.
However, the government saved the local food heritage by undertaking the cost of new public infrastructure to house these hawkers. Thus in the 1970s and 1980s emerged the (non-airconditioned) hawker centres in selected locations in the housing estates where the roadside hawkers gave up their migratory existence and settled into stalls in the hawker centres. Not only did the hygiene level of the food improve but customers also benefited from having proper dining facilities like tables and chairs as well as a wide variety of choice of food.
It was in the 1990s that private firms in Singapore started the food court chain business in the mushrooming shopping centres, providing people with extra comfort — airconditioning, piped music and pleasant decor, while dining.
In the case of Islamabad, while Melody Food Park seems to be steering into troubled waters because of mismanagement, the establishment of a second food park in Blue Area also seems to be stalled. The Capital Development Authority (CDA) had promised months ago that this second food park would be completed, and the affected portion of the service road in the vicinity was cordoned off to traffic for this purpose. But until now, no semblance of the second food park is in sight.
Even before the Melody Food Park was established, there was already a tussle between those interested in having the food park at Melody and those interested in having it in Blue Area. But what’s wrong with having food parks at Melody and Blue Area? There is no dearth of food lovers in the twin cities. Rather food lovers are growing as the desire among people to throng the markets for shopping and thus eating grows.
In fact, there is a need for food parks to be established at every major market in the different sectors, like F-7 Jinnah Market, F-6 Supermarket, F-10 Markaz, etc. CDA has recently improved the eating facilities at the quadrangle courtyard in Jinnah Supermarket by putting up tables and chairs for customers. But there is also a need to have more food stalls here offering a much wider choice of cuisine than the existing fruit chat, burger, chicken prata and ice-cream.
If the private sector is capable of running local franchises of international fastfood chains like McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut, the private sector can certainly also manage and run a successful chain of food parks in the main bazaars of the capital.
WEEK before last, we saw how the Lahore Missionary College, as the Forman Christian College was originally known, solved its housing problem. This week, we take a look at the executive work of the institution. The History of the FCC (1869-1936) gives us the following account:
Unfortunately the Mission, like all missionary bodies in India, fell into the fatal snare of expecting government to give them liberal help for their educational schemes and then accepting small sums of money for this purpose, thus failing to produce adequate financial security by depending too much on government and sacrificing their liberty. Government had provided a recurring grant of Rs300 a month, or Rs3,600 annually. The college authorities asked that this should be increased to Rs400 a month. This request was refused on the following grounds which were stated in a letter from government of the 5th September, 1888. The points are interesting:
“(1) That an aided college with a large and expensive staff of European professors is not required at Lahore, when there is a Government College which is not full and also an Anglo-Vedic College which is self-supporting.
(2) That the market is already full of candidates seeking employment from government and that higher education is valued only for the sake of obtaining such employment.
(3) That the extension of the Mission College will lead to the deflection of the students from the Government College. This fact is owing chiefly to the attraction of a lower scale of fees.
In view of the pinched condition of the provincial finances and the advisability of encouraging primary and technical education, Sir James Lyall is not willing to increase the grant, not at any rate, till experience shows that the Government College, on which government is spending large sums, will not suffer. In any case the Lieutenant-Governor is not prepared to give so large a grant as that applied for. St. Stephen’s College at Delhi, which is the only college in that very large centre, receives a grant of Rs5,400.
A very interesting feature in the financial position of the college was the comparatively large amounts of money which were raised by private subscription; in 1887-88, Rs7,381 was thus raised, in 1888-89 the amount was Rs11,129. But with this it must be remembered that as the students increased and the fee income was thereby enhanced, the subscriptions seem to have fallen.
The student body continued to grow and every year is recorded a substantial increase in students but, even then, until 1914, no one realized what demands would be made on the college, what large numbers of students would flock through its classrooms; but that is another story and we shall treat of it when the time comes. The students were often indifferent and in very early records we come across an apology for the comparatively bad results in the Intermediate Examination. The reason given for this was the admission of failed students from other colleges into second year. There seems to have been the same wastage of students as at present, though, in spite of low pass percentages, a number of students distinguished themselves in the university examinations. Over and over again are recorded that names of those who earned distinction and won university prizes and medals. In 1902 two students passed the B.Sc. examination, the first two graduates in science produced by the university, and also that year is recorded the entry of the first woman student. The college was the first institution which afforded facilities for the higher education of women in the province. Also in 1902 the first college magazine, The Forman College Monthly, was published as the pioneer of all college magazines of which there is such a large crop at the present time. In 1898 the first Graduates Reunion was held and this has been ever since an annual event which keeps old students together. Here again the college had the privilege of pioneering the way for Graduate Associations.
At a very early period in the history of the college there appeared references to student societies. For example, one of the earliest societies was the Temperance Association. Unfortunately we have no records of this society and its work in its early days, but it may be interesting to note that in the earliest records of the Mission is the Minute Book of the Ludhiana Temperance Society founded in 1838. The volume is preserved in the archives of the college. Presumably this was one of the earliest societies in the history of the Punjab. Two literary societies also were founded in the college in 1889. Very soon efforts were made to induce students to take physical exercise. Cricket was introduced and in one of the Annual Reports the hope is expressed that the students would interest themselves in tennis. But the college authorities were not content with these efforts. They seemed to have the general physical welfare of the student body at heart, and occasionally there are laments that progress along this line has not been as rapid as they had wished.
One of the earliest contributions to education in the Punjab was the student hostel. Christian colleges in India probably had the monopoly of providing these facilities to students, and with the earliest buildings hostel provision was made and students were accommodated in the lower floor of what is now the chemistry laboratory and the portion of the building which contains three classrooms on the ground floor. The actual provision was for 60 students — 40 Hindus and 20 Mohammedans. Very shortly afterwards, thanks to the benefaction of Miss Kennedy of New York, money was provided to build Kennedy Hall which was the residence for Christian students. This early policy regarding hostels culminated when Newton Hall was built in 1902 to accommodate 160 students.
This chapter on the early days may befittingly brought to a close by a description of the visit of the Lieutenant Governor. On Wednesday, the 14th October 1888, Sir Charles U. Atchison paid a short visit to the Lahore Mission College, an institution which had been founded during his term of office as Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab. On his arrival he was received by the Rev. John Newton, President of the Board of Directors, by the Rev. C.W. Forman, Principal, and by the professors of the college, who conducted him to the room where the students — about 115 in number — were assembled. After a few kind words by Sir Charles to the students, Lachman Das, B.A class, read the following short address on behalf of the students of the college:
“MAY IT PLEASE YOUR HONOUR, — We, the students of the Lahore Mission College, beg to address a few words to you on this occasion with reference particularly to that part of your administration which concerns us most. As a benign Governor, and as a staunch friend of the natives as well as of all other classes, you have conferred on us such blessings as will enable us to fit ourselves for the duties both of this life and of that which is to come. Through your efforts a new era has been introduced into the education and literary history of the Punjab, and though your term of office has now come to an end, you have not ceased to think of our welfare and you are still trying in every possible way to better our condition. You have given us, above all opportunities to reap the benefits of Western culture and civilization and you have done that which will, in time, enable us to take our place among the civilized nations of the world. You have been one of those friends of whose friendship we shall ever be proud, and your efforts in the interests of education can never be forgotten. We deeply regret that your term of office has ended so soon, and that you must now take leave from us; but we are assured that, in the distance, too, you will remain our well-wisher and friend.”
Sir Charles, in reply, made a few very appropriate remarks, the substance of which is as follow:
“Students, — I have just as little inclination to make a speech as you have to hear me, for I have come here unprepared. I cannot accept the remarks you have addressed to me in full, but I accept them as a mark of the appreciation you have for the humble efforts I have made in the interests of education. I am glad you think so much of the advantages you enjoy, and I hope you will make the most of them. Your advancement depends on the efforts you make for yourselves. Remember that the main object of education is to build up character. In all that you do be thorough. Do nothing mean, nothing dishonourable, nothing that you need be ashamed of. Be manly, be sincere, be true to yourself and to God, and He will bless you. Pay strict attention to your professors and teachers. We want more such institutions, where men are taught not only for time, but for eternity. I wish you every success in your studies and future career. “And now, as I am not likely to see you again, I wish you all a hearty farewell.”
The students then assembled in the verandah and gave a parting cheer to Sir Charles as he drove off.