| June 11, 2005 | Saturday | Jumadi-ul-Awwal 3, 1426 |
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Brainwashed sisters
Female dropout trend
THE Punjab budget for 2005-06 presented by Finance Minister Hasnain Dareshak to the provincial assembly on Thursday paints a rosy picture of things as they are and of things as they will be. There isn’t a cloud in the sky and there isn’t a worry in the world and our sewers flow with milk and honey. The size of the budget is Rs224 billion, 24 per cent higher than the outgoing year’s. How much of this increase will be eaten up by inflation is anybody’s guess. The province hopes to get Rs165 billion and a bit from the federal divisible pool, straight transfers and grants while its own receipts are estimated at around Rs59 billion, 11 per cent more than in 2004-05. The recently announced pay and pension package will cost eight billion rupees while the local governments will get Rs90 billion, including a development outlay of Rs10 billion to be financed out of the capital budget of the province. The government hopes to create fiscal space by continuing to exchange its expensive cash development loans with cheaper ones. Top priority has been given to education. Non-existent facilities to 64,000 schools will be provided by the end of next year. Free textbooks for high school classes and scholarships for girls are also envisaged. The ban on hiring new teachers has been lifted. There is also a welcome provision for educating special children.
In spite of all this and more, the private education bazaar continues to expand and exploit. The proliferation of private schools and colleges continues unabated. Over the years quality education has become less and less accessible to more and more young people. Quite naturally, better jobs are available only to the better educated or such of them as we have. Little or nothing is being done for population planning. We have a nightmarish situation in which urban and rural populations are rising, putting the farming and the industrial sectors under a back-breaking pressure from multiplying millions who need more and more out of a rapidly dwindling bread basket. Itinerant labour is another problem which has not been addressed. There will be a 65 per cent increase in the health budget. However, extremely expensive private clinics and hospitals continue to mushroom.
Sadly, the finance minister does not even acknowledge the existence of the inequities in education and health. He recognizes the existence of the millions who live below the poverty line but dismisses them in a four-line paragraph and we can forget the Rs10 billion which has been earmarked for the dispossessed. Likewise, the vital issues of water supply and drainage have been summarily brushed aside. Road construction and maintenance will get Rs12.5 billion which, considering the standard of engineering and our contract system, will once again be a losing proposition. Roads don’t last one monsoon while the thekedars continue to thrive. The finance minister announced the welcome creation of a green fund to fight pollution, in the transport sector to begin with. One billion rupees has been earmarked for the purpose which, considering everything, is a drop in the ocean. Mr Dareshak made no mention of the national finance commission or its award which is long overdue. He is, after all, one of the king’s men and king’s men hear no evil, speak no evil and see no evil.
IT is horrifying to know that two sisters, both college students, were preparing to become suicide bombers. If they had succeeded in carrying out their fiendish deed, they would have been Pakistan’s first females to kill and maim people in the name of religion. Aged 18 and 20, the sisters were trained in this killing art by their uncle, who himself has been sentenced to death for his involvement in suicide attacks. The uncle belonged to the banned Lashkar-i-Jhangvi. The ban seems to have had no chastening effect on the Lashkar members, for it was this Lashkar which struck at Madinatul Ilm mosque in Karachi late last month. Driven underground, it has managed to survive and continue with its activities. However, the most pernicious of its activities is the way it is able to indoctrinate young people with its murderous philosophy.
Those who poison young minds may not necessarily be suicide-bombers or terrorist themselves; they are “ideologues” quietly working for various sectarian outfits. It is they who are far more lethal than the terrorists in the field. Activists and commandos are born because they are won over to the cause by these preachers, who impart a perverted concept of religion to the people. The fact that two college girls should have fallen into their trap shows their power over youth. The two girls are not the only ones infected with a dose of a perverted philosophy being pedalled as Islam; there are a large number of others who are regularly brainwashed into becoming blind followers of the preachers of hatred. They do not think for themselves and are utterly devoid of any human values that any civilized society cherishes. The only concept they have of religion is a totalitarian ideology which believes in the physical elimination of those who disagree with them. Governmental measures have evidently failed to curb the activities of the Lashkar and other sectarian outfits. Basically, it is for the ulema and the enlightened sections of society to counter this challenge to the very foundations of our society. Religious extremism has done enormous harm to Pakistan. It has not only given a bad image to the country; it stands in the way of the country’s development on liberal, democratic lines.
A RECENT report in this paper has pointed to the disturbing trend of high school dropout rates among students in the country. Indeed, Pakistan has some of the worst statistics in the world in this regard, with approximately 50 per cent of all those enrolled in school dropping out before completing primary schooling. Of this, the majority consists of female students. Under the prevailing conditions of poor access to schools, extreme poverty and conservative traditions (especially in the rural areas), most girls have no option but to leave off their education, sometimes without even acquiring rudimentary knowledge. This factor, coupled with the low enrolment rate among girls, is chiefly responsible for the wide gender gap that exists in the education sector as well as for the long-term disadvantages of illiterate mothers.
Unfortunately, there are few signs that this trend will be reversed any time soon. The problem is rooted in the lack of political will on the part of the government to chalk out and implement a countrywide programme for providing greater access to education. True, Punjab has had some measure of success in conducting a sustained campaign of reforms, whose one aim is to eliminate the gender disparity in education. But what prevents the other provincial governments from following suit? Even putting aside the valid argument of equal rights for girls and their entitlement to a decent education like their male counterparts, we still cannot afford to disregard the larger picture of obstacles being put in the way of national progress by an uneducated female population. The educational authorities must, therefore, wake up from their slumber and come up with far-reaching educational reforms for all the provinces that would make judicious use of the available resources emphasize the importance of female education and set up a sufficient number of schools to ensure easy accessibility of the needed facilities.