THE conventional approach for addressing the problem posed by the underdevelopment of the educational sector is based on six assumptions. One problem — by far the most important one according to most experts — many societies face is that the opportunity cost of sending children to school is greater than the benefit education is likely to bring. Parents bear costs even when education is free.

The perceived cost of education is likely to be more of an inhibiting factor for the attendance of girls in schools than for boys. In poor households girls help their mothers handle a variety of chores including caring for their siblings. One way of approaching this problem is to provide monetary incentives to parents to send their children to school. School feeding programmes fall into this category of assistance; they lower the cost of education for parents.

Two, the state may not be spending enough on education. The remedy is to increase the proportion of public resources going into education. If the tax-to-GDP ratio cannot be increased, the state should be willing to divert resources from sectors with lower priority towards education. The donor community has been prepared to help with funds if there was the fear that domestic resources were too constrained to allow for an increase in public sector expenditure on education. This was one reason why development institutions such as the World Bank significantly increased their lending for education.

Three, typically a state spends more on secondary, tertiary and university education than on primary education. The cure is to divert more funds into primary schooling and if need be charge students attending colleges and universities.

Four, the quality of instruction is poor. The obvious solution is to invest in teacher training, reforming the curriculum and improving the quality of textbooks. Sometimes the quality may suffer because schools may lack proper physical facilities. They may be poorly constructed or the buildings may be poorly maintained. The students may not even have chairs and desks on which they can sit and work. This problem can be handled, once again, by committing more resources for public sector education.

Five, the educational bureaucracy is too remote for the parents who wish to see an improvement in the quality of education given to their children. This gap between the provider and the receiver can be bridged by organizing parents to oversee the working of the educational system. Teachers can be made responsible to the parent’s association in addition to being responsible to the educational departments in some distant place.

Six, in highly traditional societies, parents will be prepared to send their girls to school only if they don’t have to travel long distances, if they are taught by female teachers, and if the schools have appropriate toilet facilities. In some situations, parents would be prepared to educate girls if there are single-sex schools. The solution for this problem is to build more schools for girls and to employ more female teachers.

All this was learned from a great deal of experience by the donor agencies from their work around the world. Most of these lessons were incorporated in a high-profile programme of assistance for educational improvement launched by the World Bank in Pakistan in the late 1980s. Called the Social Action Programme, the plan developed by the bank was supported by a number of donor agencies and billions of dollars were spent on it for over a decade. The result was disheartening.

The programme was inconsequential in achieving even the most fundamental objectives: increasing the rate of enrolment in primary schools for both boys and girls and bringing education even to the more remote areas of the country. The bank made several attempts to correct the course during the implementation phase but the programme did not succeed. There was one simple reason for the programme’s failure. It did not take full cognizance of the fact that the educational bureaucracy was so corrupt, inefficient and dysfunctional that it could not possibly deliver a programme of this size. Ultimately, the donors decided to abandon the programme altogether.

Given this experience and given the magnitude of the problem the country faces what options are available to the policymakers in the country and the donor community interested in providing help to Pakistan?

A variety of donors have already committed large amounts of finance for helping Pakistan educate its population. According to a recent count by the Ministry of Education in Islamabad, foreign commitment for education is currently estimated at $1.44 billion spread over a period of seven years, from 2002 to 2009. Of this, $450 million is being provided as grants with the United States at $100 million being the largest donor. The remaining one billion dollars is being given in the form of soft loans by the World Bank ($650 million) and the Asian Development Bank ($339 million). These commitments amount to some $370 million a year.

The government has also announced its intention to significantly increase the amount of public funds for education. In 2000-2001, funding for education amounted to only 1.96 per cent of the gross domestic product. This increased to 2.7 per cent by 2003-2004 when the government spent about $2 billion on education, of which about one-quarter was provided by donors. It is the government’s intention to increase the amount of public resources committed to education to about four per cent of GDP which would bring the expenditure on par with that of most other developing countries.

However, the experience with the World Bank funded and supervised Social Action Programme tells us that a mere increase in the availability of resources will not address the problem. What is required is a multi-pronged approach in which increased resource commitment is one of several policy initiatives. For Pakistan to succeed this time around, it will have to be imaginative and comprehensive in the strategy it adopts. There are at least 10 elements of this approach which should be added to the six enumerated above.

First, the government must develop a core curriculum that must be taught in all schools up to the twelfth grade. Along with the prescription of such a core syllabus, the government should also create a body to oversee the textbooks used for instruction. There should be no restriction on the submission of books that can be used as authorized text and there should be a fair amount of choice available to schools.

They should be able to pick from an approved list. The selected books must carry the “good-housekeeping seal of approval” of the authority created for this purpose. The members of the authority should be selected by an autonomous education commission whose members can be nominated by the government but should be approved by the National Assembly.

Second, no institution should be allowed to take in students unless it registers with the education commission. The commission should issue certificates of registration to the institutions which should indicate what kind of curriculum is being taught in addition to the core syllabus. Over time, the commission should develop the expertise to grade schools according to their quality. A scale of the type used by credit rating agencies for assessing the performance of business and financial corporations could be used by the commission as a way of informing the parents about the type and quality of education on offer.

Third, either the education commission or a similar body should issue certificates to qualified teachers. No school, no matter what kind of curriculum it teaches, should be allowed to hire teachers unless they have been appropriately certified by the authority. The certificate should indicate which subject(s) the teacher has the competence to teach.

Fourth, in order to further encourage the participation of the private sector while lessening the burden of the public sector, the state should encourage the establishment of private education foundations that will be run on a non-profit basis and will raise funds that will qualify for tax exemption. These foundations should also be encouraged to register abroad so that they can receive contributions from the members of the Pakistani expatriate communities in the United States, Britain and the Middle East. The government should offer for sale to the foundations the institutions it manages at all levels. This will be a form of privatization with the intent to encourage not only educational entrepreneurs to enter the field but also to involve the people who are interested in improving the quality of education in the country.

Fifth, the government must reform the management of the educational system. One way of doing this would be to decentralize the system’s financing and supervision to the local level. The recent devolution of authority permitted by the reform of the local government structure has created an opportunity for the involvement of local communities in educational management.

The development of the local government system as envisaged by the administration of President Pervez Musharraf is being challenged by some vested interests including the members of the national and provincial legislatures who fear an erosion of power as more authority flows to the local level. The old bureaucracy that had exercised enormous power under the old structure is also reluctant to loosen its grip. This resistance will need to be overcome.

Sixth, parent-teacher-administrator associations should be created that manage funds and allocate them to the areas in which serious deficiencies exist. These associations should also have the authority to assess the performance of the teachers and administrators based on the quality of education given. Parental involvement in education, even when the parents themselves were not literate or poorly educated yielded very positive results in several countries of Central and South America.

Seventh, the government should attempt to level the playing field by making it possible for children of less well-to-do households to gain admission into the privately managed schools. The government could initiate a programme of grants and loans that should be administered by the commercial banks. Such an approach was tried successfully in Mexico. Letting the banks manage these programmes will save them from being corrupted.

Eighth, to address the serious problem of youth unemployment in a population growing rapidly and in a society that is becoming increasingly susceptible to accepting destructive ideologies, it is important to focus a great deal of attention on skill development. This will require investment in vocational schools or adding technical skills to the school curriculum.

Ninth, in undertaking a school construction programme to improve physical facilities, special attention should be given to the needs of girls. Only then will the parents have the assurance that the schools to which they are sending their daughters can handle their special needs.

Tenth, and finally, a serious review of current expenditure on public sector education should be undertaken. It is well known that the state pays to a large number of “ghost teachers” who don’t teach but turn up to collect their monthly pay cheques. It is also well known that the annual recurrent cost in well managed private schools that are able to provide high quality education is one-half the recurrent cost of public schools. Rationalization of these expenditures will increase the productivity of resource use.

Pakistan’s educational system requires an almost total overhaul. It will not be reformed simply by the deployment of additional resources. This was tried once before by the donor community under the auspices of the World Bank’s Social Action Programme. That as we noted above did not succeed. What is required now is a well thought out and comprehensive approach that deals with all facets of the system.

“It just offends me that the president of the United States is, directly or indirectly, attacking his own country in a foreign land.” That was 1998. The speaker, Tom DeLay, was then house majority whip. The president was Bill Clinton, who had “attacked his own country” while in Uganda. “Going back to the time before we were even a nation,” Clinton had told an African audience, “European Americans received the fruits of the slave trade. And we were wrong in that.”

Fast-forward seven years; the president is now George W. Bush. A week ago, he unexpectedly proffered an apology for the 1945 Yalta agreement, which legitimized Soviet control of Eastern Europe. Speaking in Latvia, one of the countries that remained under Soviet occupation, Bush said that Yalta, an agreement reached by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, “followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable.”

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about Bush’s comments is that they constitute an apology for a historical disaster most Americans don’t remember. I certainly knew nothing of the bitterness that many East Europeans felt toward the United States and Britain until I was personally accused of “selling out” Poland at Yalta — a deal done 20 years before I was born — during my first trip to Warsaw in the 1980s.

Less surprising is the tenor of the reaction. On the left, a small crew of liberal historians and Rooseveltians have leaped to argue that the president was wrong, and that Yalta was a recognition of reality rather than a sellout.

Their charges ignore the breadth of the agreement — was it really necessary to agree to deport thousands of expatriate Russians back to certain death in the Soviet Union? — as well as the fact that Yalta and the other wartime agreements went beyond mere recognition of Soviet occupation and conferred legality and international acceptance on new borders and political structures. But on the right, no one — certainly not Tom DeLay — has objected to Bush’s statement because it took place on foreign soil.

Politics, of course, explains these differences. Clinton’s trip to Africa occurred during the Paula Jones harassment lawsuit, and DeLay’s comments were part of what was to become an “if he can apologize for that, why can’t he apologize for Monica” story line. Bush’s trip to Latvia took place during a debate about Social Security, and may well become part of a “he’s trying to dismantle FDR’s legacy” story line.

At the same time, no one on the right objected — and no one on the left applauded loudly — when Bush, on his own trip to Africa in 2003, not only apologized for slavery on foreign soil but declared that its impact still lingers. “My nation’s journey toward justice has not been easy, and it is not over,” the president said: “The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation.”

Both left and right would do better to stand back and think harder about how important it is for American diplomacy, and even Americans’ understanding of their own past, when US presidents, Republican or Democrat, admit that not every past US policy was successful — which, by any measure, Yalta was not.

Since the end of the Cold War, historical honesty has become more normal everywhere in the West, and rightly so: We aren’t, after all, trying to withstand a Soviet propaganda onslaught, and we’ve grown more used to thinking, at least some of the time, of our national disputes as evidence of the authenticity of our democracy. To put it differently, apologies are something that democracies can do, at least occasionally, but that the Chinese or the Syrians always find impossible. Infallibility nowadays is something that only dictatorships claim.

Both left and right should also consider contexts more carefully. Certainly the president’s speech last weekend did not sound personal, as if he were apologizing to feel good about himself. It did not mention Roosevelt by name or wallow in Cold War rhetoric.

On the contrary, Bush went on afterward to talk about the democratic values that had replaced Yalta, and to draw contemporary lessons. The tone was right — and it contrasted sharply with the behaviour of Russian president Vladimir Putin, as perhaps it was intended to. Asked again last week why he hadn’t made his own apology for the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, Putin pointed out that the Soviet parliament did so in 1989. “What,” he asked, “we have to do this every day, every year?”

The answer is no, the Russian president doesn’t have to talk about the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe every day — but during a major, international anniversary of the end of the war, he clearly should. And no, the US president does not have to talk about Yalta every year, but when he goes to Latvia to mark the anniversary of the end of the war he should — just as any American president visiting Africa for the first time should speak of slavery.

No American or Russian leader should appear unpatriotic when abroad, but at the right time, in the right place, it is useful for statesmen to tell the truth, even if just to acknowledge that some stretches of our history were more ambiguous, and some of our victories more bittersweet, than they once seemed.—Dawn/Washington Post Service

THE fact that much of Pakistani society could do with a good dose of tolerance, reason and realism was never in doubt. However, the recent publication of a cartoon in an American newspaper and the near-hysterical reaction of many Pakistanis, especially the members of the National Assembly and assorted politicians drives the point home once again with renewed emphasis.

Consider what happened in the first week of May, after the capture of Al Qaeda’s operational commander Abu Faraj Al Libbi. Bill Garner, editorial cartoonist for the conservative and right-of-centre Washington Times, drew a cartoon showing Pakistan as a dog holding Al Libbi in his mouth, while a US soldier says to the dog: “Good boy! Now let’s go find [Osama] bin Laden”.

The news of the cartoon was published in various Pakistani newspapers, prompting the National Assembly, which was in session at the time, to devote several hours of debate to the offensive cartoon. Politicians of the six-party ARD alliance and from the treasury benches unequivocally condemned the Washington Times and said that the cartoon was proof of the slave-like relationship that Pakistan had come to form with the US.

This line of reasoning fitted in well with the attitude of the critics of the Musharraf government’s policy of cooperation with the US in the war on terror. Among them Tehrik-i-Insaf chief Imran Khan and the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, JUI chief Maulana Fazlur Rahman, were in the forefront of the attacks on the US-Pakistan alliance.

Mr Khan spoke quite severely of the relationship and proposed that Pakistan should deny US forces’ use of bases on its soil. The minister of state for religious affairs, Aamir Liaquat Hussain, joined in saying that the government would take up the matter with the US government. Eventually, much to everyone’s satisfaction, the National Assembly ended up passing a unanimous resolution asking the federal government to take up the issue of the cartoon with the US government.

Following this, even the Foreign Office spokesman got into the act saying that the cartoon was “highly derogatory” and that Pakistan had asked the US government to investigate whether the cartoon was a “deliberate attempt to ridicule the country”.

Then, on May 10, the newspaper itself, in an editorial titled ‘A dog’s life (and times)’, said that the Pakistani embassy in Washington had told the newspaper that the cartoon was “an insult to the sentiments of the people of both Pakistan and the United States as it strengthens the hands of the extremists”. The editorial further said that “this imputes more power to a mere newspaper than any newspaper deserves, but we take the embassy’s point and offer the assurance that no insult was intended.” Quite clearly part of the problem in this case was a lack of understanding of the cultural image of dogs in this country and the West.

There is no denying that the cartoon was indeed offensive and that its timing, appearing just when Newsweek magazine had reported that US soldiers were deliberately desecrating the Holy Quran while interrogating prisoners at Guantanamo Bay detention centre, couldn’t have been worse. But the over-reaction seen in Pakistan is clearly not justified. First, the cartoon appeared in a private publication and to ask the US government to take the matter up with the newspaper’s management seemed to make little sense, reflecting a lack of understanding of how the print media works in the US.

Some of the main critics of the cartoon, especially Imran Khan, have lived in the West and should be aware of the fact that the media there often pokes fun, sometimes in poor taste, at prime ministers, ministers, other domestic politicians, royalty, entertainers and various public personalities. As already pointed out quite aptly in a Dawn editorial the other day, British newspapers routinely show their own Prime Minister Tony Blair as George Bush’s pet dog.

However, neither did Mr Blair’s government order a crackdown on the offending newspapers or ‘take the issue up with the management’ of the newspapers, nor did the House of Commons pass a resolution against any such portrayal of the prime minister.

One argument used by those who have huffed and puffed about the cartoon is that it reflects the very poor opinion that the newspaper has of the US-Pakistan relationship. These people should have known that the Washington Times is a very conservative newspaper which makes no bones about its political and ideological leanings and its editorial content generally reflects its reactionary views. And as the newspaper itself indirectly admitted in its editorial, the unanimous resolution passed by the National Assembly seems to have given the Washington Times and its cartoonist far more importance than the matter warranted.

Also, what exactly is the US government expected to ‘take up’ with the newspaper given that lampooning and ridiculing domestic politicians, especially presidents, is quite common in America. Mr Bush can perhaps express anger and frustration in private with the constant ridiculing he receives at the hands of many a prominent late-night talk show host (and indeed from many cartoonists and stand-up comics as well) but his administration cannot really extract an apology from the management of a newspaper or a TV network, unless libel or defamation is involved.

For their part, the members of the National Assembly (who must be feeling quite happy and content for passing the resolution) should perhaps devote equal time and attention to other pressing matters. For instance, not a single member of parliament could find the courage to express even shock and outrage at the recent lynching of a man in Nowshera by an enraged mob after he was accused of blasphemy or to take on the self-styled guardians of public morality who recently attacked a women’s race in Gujranwala.

Similarly, when incidents of harassment and violence against women, children or religious minorities happen inside Pakistan — quite regular occurrences — one never sees any MNA or senator huffing and puffing or proposing resolutions against the discrimination or demanding that the federal government arrest and punish the perpetrators.

In fact, how many members of parliament have found the time to debate issues and provide solutions to problems that are close to the heart of most Pakistanis such as provision of clean drinking water, combating rising environmental pollution, providing cheap and affordable public transport, or having schools that have walls and teachers and basic health units which actually have doctors, nurses and medicines at government subsidized rates.

For example, instead of promising that the government would take follow-up action on the cartoon insult, the minister of state for religious affairs would have done better if he had, instead, chosen, for example, to inform parliament of the progress, if any, on the registration of madressahs and the measures, if any, being taken to modernize their curriculum.

When they are not absenting themselves from the house, something that is quite the norm given the frequent adjournments that happen because of lack of quorum, they are busy making fiery speeches and passing unanimous resolutions on non-issues like a cartoon appearing in a country thousands of miles away.

Email: omarq@cyber.net.pk

IT IS doubtful if any state welcomes queries from the UN Special Rapporteur (UNSR) on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression because such inquiries relate to denial of a key human right. Thus, Islamabad is unlikely to take pride in the fact that during 2004 it was involved in frequent exchanges with the rapporteur. An account of this correspondence, submitted by the rapporteur to the UN Commission on Human Rights in March last, however, is not without some credit to Pakistan.

This record shows that during 2004 the government took its obligation to respond to the rapporteur somewhat more seriously than in the past and that is certainly a welcome sign. Before the end of the year Pakistan had answered nine of the 14 communications received from the UNSR. In some cases the replies were sent quite promptly. For instance, an appeal made in January 2004 was answered in the following month and two queries made in June were answered in July. It is possible that replies to the five appeals left unanswered in 2004 could not be sent for lack of time as three of them were made during October- November.

Another creditable feature of the record is the degree of vigilance displayed by the UN rapporteur in keeping track of happenings in Pakistan that related to the right to freedom of expression. The list of cases taken up by him may not be exhaustive but it is fairly adequate.

The substance of the UN rapporteur’s appeals and Pakistan’s replies, however, reveal a situation that cannot be considered very complimentary to the government of Pakistan. The first three of the rapporteur’s communications related to the case involving Khawar Mehdi who was accused of helping two French journalists to make a ‘fake’ film on the Taliban.

Khawar Mehdi has recently been acquitted but for about a year the case did more damage to Pakistan’s reputation than the harm alleged to have been caused by him. One of the points on which the rapporteur expressed concern was the accused’s trial before an anti- terrorism court. Islamabad maintained in its replies of February 25 and June 10 “ that the case of Khawar Mehdi Rizvi was not pending before any anti-terrorist court.” How was it possible to make such a wrong assertion? It was in June 2004 that Khawar Mehdi was indicted by the Anti-terrorism Court II, Quetta.

The next case concerned Dr. A. H. Nayyar, a well-known peace activist. He had organized some demonstrations in Islamabad in April- May 2003. In March 2004 two policemen called on him and advised him to secure bail before arrest because an FIR had been registered against him.

The government said in reply to the rapporteur’s appeal that an FIR had been registered against Dr. Nayyar for violating Section 144 but it had been quashed by the Lahore High Court on the ground of its having been filed without lawful authority. Islamabad does deserve some appreciation for its candour in conceding that its officials can ignore the law while initiating criminal proceedings for violations of Section 144.

Some of the answers offered by the government cannot easily be appreciated. In June 2004, the special rapporteurs on freedom of expression and on torture made a joint urgent appeal concerning Dewan Hashmat Hayat. His house had been demolished by a sectarian mob and then he had been arrested on a blasphemy charge and allegedly tortured in the Jhelum central jail. He could get pain killers only by bribing the jailers.

The government replied quite soon (July 7, 2004) and admitted that Hashmat Hayat had indeed complained of neighbours’ threats to demolish his house, and that his house was in fact looted and demolished. The culprits were not prosecuted because the victim neither pursued the case nor presented evidence. As for his arrest, he had been held in relation to a homicide case.

This reply furnishes a most unconscionable example of government’s repudiation of its elementary duties to citizens or implies that the government was as scared of proceeding against the culprits as was Hashmat Hayat.

Even more revealing of the government’s authoritarian mind is the case of Sarwar Mujahid, the Okara reporter who was sent to prison under MPO for filing reports on the plight of tenants who were being oppressed by the Rangers. A joint urgent appeal was made on Sept 14, 2004 by three special rapporteurs — on freedom of expression, on arbitrary detention and on torture. The government in its reply (December 13, 2004) insisted that Sarwar Mujahid had been arrested and detained in accordance with the provincial laws because he was disrupting public order by instigating tenants to launch a protest against the district administration/ armed forces. He had written baseless articles in opposition to government policies. The government reply also alleged that Sarwar had been warned by the local press club and had been involved in a scuffle with the police outside the Okara sessions court. In any case he was to be released on Sept 30.

The reply was dated 13 December and the information that Sarwar had been freed by the High Court was omitted. The writer of this note obviously has no respect for reason. If Sarwar was held for having committed some offences, why was he held under a preventive detention law? Why was he not prosecuted under a normal law? Above all, the official story did not impress the Lahore High Court as it held Sarwar’s detention illegal and ordered his release.

The rapporteur’s urgent appeals that remained unanswered included the one concerning Javed Hashmi, the PML-N and ARD leader who was sentenced to 23 years’ imprisonment for forgery, defamation and ‘inciting mutiny in the army.’ This appeal was made on April 28, on the same day that the case of the arrest of journalist Sami Yousafzai had been raised. A response to the latter appeal was made in good time (on June 10) but the appeal regarding Javed Hashmi was ignored.

In Oct 2004, the special rapporteur sent a long letter concerning a number of cases. These included: denial of official advertising to a number of newspapers; attacks on Jang and GEO offices in Quetta; burning of newspapers by gunmen in Karachi; attacks on the Geo office and the Karachi Press Club; the alleged ban on reporting on the operations in Waziristan and actions against several journalists; interference with the work of journalists who were covering Shahbaz Sharif’s abortive bid to return to Lahore; the brief detention of four journalists in Waziristan; ban on some Peshawar journalists’ entry into the Fata; and an Islamabad-based woman reporter’s detention by a bureaucrat in his office. The reason for not responding to this letter by the end of 2004 is anybody’s guess.

If the government of Pakistan claims to be a responsible authority, the references to this country in the 2004 report to the UN Commission on Human Rights must lead to some serious thinking.

It is necessary to realize that denial of freedom of expression, or violation of any basic human right for that matter, can no longer be concealed from international watchdog bodies even if human rights activists at home can be disregarded or otherwise ‘handled’, and that no state can afford to be found in contempt of international human rights norms. The best way to avoid censure is to guarantee maximum possible respect for the freedom of expression.

However, even the best governments can be led into committing violations of this right. Statements about such matters before world forums have to be drafted with greater regard for truth and commonsense than is evident in the work of officials retained to issue contradictions and clarifications to the national media.

Matters should improve a great deal if the government starts releasing to the public the communications received from international agencies and its rejoinders.

Among other things this may bring some credit to the information paraphernalia and enable it to disseminate information instead of disinformation. Besides, the practice of keeping communications to and from the UN secret is by itself a denial of the right to freedom of expression and information.