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| February 12, 2008 | Tuesday | Safar 04, 1429 |
Winds of change?
Prevention is the key
For fathers everywhere
OTHER VOICES - Sindhi Press
TO help discover their true potential, everyone needs someone in life, who will recognise and nurture their talent. Help put the child in touch with the special gift that can become the genesis of a passion and light up the future. For me such a person was my father whom I lost some weeks ago.
WHILE the Charsadda blast has ignited a controversy with regard to the numbers killed and the mode of the bombing itself, one thing is crystal clear to all parties. The horrific and condemnable tragedy (involving an ANP rally in Charsadda, NWFP) has further weakened a dull and lacklustre electioneering campaign, and has left people in the province demoralised and worried about their safety. Unfortunately, security concerns are not restricted to one or the other city or province. They are spread across the country, a fact which, coupled with general apathy, has hindered vigorous campaigning. Such fears, justified by attacks like the one on Benazir Bhutto’s rally in Liaquat Bagh last December or the earlier one in Charsadda, have negative implications for voter turnout on Feb 18. With the prevailing sense of pessimism — that political parties have failed to dispel — and insecurity, one can assume that voter turnout this time will be less than even the poor 42 per cent (35 in the NWFP) recorded in the 2002 polls. And no amount of urging by the government or the Election Commission will bring out the voters unless it is visible to all that steps are being taken to ensure security at rallies and to bring those who disrupt them to book. It is the absence of this which also fuels speculation about the government’s seeming reluctance to hold polls and leads to misgivings of its direct involvement in election-related violence.
What is of equal concern is that constraints such as those of security damage the overall spirit of democracy. The long-term consequence of people being too fearful to attend political rallies or to vote in large numbers contributes to the diminishment of their voice in national affairs. This fact is often exploited by vested interests with a stake in power and who have little respect for representative politics. It is imperative then that the air must be cleared of elements that dampen vigorous electioneering. With elections scheduled for next week, there is little time for a complete overhaul. However, the government can certainly appear to care for the lives of the electorate by providing full security at remaining rallies — all this without seeming to side with one political party or the other. It goes without saying that it is also necessary to beef up security on polling day itself. The lives of the thousands who come out to vote and of the staff manning the polling booths must be protected at all costs.
IN a welcome move, five independent power producers have been issued licences to set up wind energy plants while several other applications for similar projects are also in the pipeline. Now that a start has been made it is vital that the transition from the drawing board to physical implementation is not impeded in any way, particularly by the bureaucratic bottlenecks for which the country is notorious. Pakistan’s energy needs are becoming more pressing by the day and all available resources must be tapped as best as they can and brought on line as speedily as possible. Unfortunately the energy crisis is now so severe that it cannot be tackled in the short term without additional oil- and gas-fired thermal plants. But that said, our heavy dependence on imported oil is simply not sustainable while local gas reserves are depleting rapidly. Indigenous alternatives have to be found and renewable energy can play a significant role in this connection, in both the immediate and long terms. This key area was largely ignored by officialdom until about a year ago — but then, to be fair, the last government paid scant attention to all modes of power generation for the better part of a decade.
According to the Economic Survey of Pakistan 2006-07, renewable energy accounted for a mere 180MW in 2005 out of a total installed generation capacity of roughly 19,500MW. The government’s power generation plan envisages that renewable energy’s contribution will increase to 1,680MW by 2015 and 9,700MW by 2030. Signs of some forward movement on this front finally came in Dec 2006 with the launch of the country’s first renewable energy policy. Also in Dec 2006, the Asian Development Bank offered Islamabad a $510m loan for the development of clean and efficient sources of energy, including small and medium-size hydroelectric facilities as well as wind, solar and biomass power plants.
Although biomass has great potential in an agricultural country and solar energy too could become financially viable as technology improves, the initial focus is on wind power whose competitiveness at the retail stage has already been proven in several countries. Studies conducted by the Met department confirm that coastal Sindh is ideally suited to the generation of wind energy, as are parts of Balochistan to a lesser extent. In Sindh alone, it is estimated that wind farms in a 45,000 sq km coastal corridor stretching from Keti Bandar to Gharo and extending up to Jamshoro can generate nearly 11,000MW of electricity. Small, stand-alone wind farms can also help provide electricity to remote areas that cannot be hooked up easily to the national grid. Realising wind power’s full potential may be a long way off but there must be no looking back from this point on.
THE age-old aphorism of prevention being better than cure has taken on added significance in our context. When the maxim was coined, nobody would have had the financial and administrative implications in mind. The focus would have surely been on one’s quality of health and life. But with the healthcare delivery infrastructure in the country already in a shambles, it makes perfect sense for those leading the nation to spend time, resources and energy on the preventive side as well. The coverage of the threat posed to human life by avian influenza — bird flu, as it is commonly called — however suggests that little is being done in concrete terms. A news report last week said poultry bylaws which have been worked out to minimise the threat in Karachi still needed enforcement simply because they have yet not been published in the official gazette. This certainly is not the kind of urgency that the situation demands. How bad is the reality on the ground, how urgent is the compulsion to act and how frightening can be the consequences in case we don’t may be indicated by another report in this paper. It is said that no government hospital in the city is in a position to offer the much-needed treatment to bird flu patients in isolation. A single human case may trigger a pandemic because of the highly contagious nature of the H5N1 strain, but hospitals are in no position to handle such an emergency. Worse still, the country has just one laboratory, in Islamabad, to confirm or reject a bird flu diagnosis. Not long ago, the country had to pay a heavy price in terms of loss of human lives in the absence of enough virology labs when the dreaded dengue virus visited the region. It was only after the initial wave of disaster that the government could arrange the availability of testing kits across the country that quickened the pace of diagnosis and improved chances of recovery. It is our fervent hope that the authorities concerned will not wait for a disaster of similar magnitude to happen again before they take preventive steps.
His complicated cardiac condition had made his health precarious for the last decade and I saw him struggle for life many a time in hospitals, so when he slipped away quietly, I could only thank God for his well-lived life and serene end.
Now as I realise that he will never sit in his ‘lazyboy’ again, memories rush to fill the emptiness, and moments I took for granted appear like pieces of a mosaic that reveal his vital influence on the centrality of art in my life and the way I perceive the world through the prism of his positive values.
My earliest memories are of a home full of interesting things he loved to collect. Reproductions of modernists like Kadinsky and Picasso on our walls, as a 10-year-old, made me curious about art. A well-thumbed book on the figurative drawings of Leonardo da Vinci from his collection set the benchmark of draftsmanship, a yardstick I continue to use to this day.
The real turning point came when I turned 16 and my parents gifted me with a wooden painter’s box containing the best of oil pigments, brushes and a palette. Accompanying this was an easel which stood taller than me. With this precious present, my parents seemed to not only acknowledge my fledgling talent but facilitate the first step towards its development.
In our extensive summer car journeys through Pakistan, both in the East and West wings, he sought local crafts with enthusiasm.
Hala ceramic bowls and traditional roti baskets were always in use at home as far back as I can remember. At a pit stop in Multan, on the way to Murree, one summer, in the local handicraft emporium my father was drawn to a tall cylindrical brass tea set embossed with Indus Valley motifs.
Modern in design it was clearly a non-functional piece but it soon became a favourite piece in his brass collection which was meticulously polished, almost like a ritual, at regular intervals.
In Dhaka, it was the museum with Zainul Abedin masterpieces that he took us to visit because the artist’s Famine Series had touched him deeply.
He was also the one to introduce his children to Sadequain’s murals at the Tarbela Turbine Room.
I found him happiest handling craft, particularly ceramics, with which he seemed to have an instinctive bond. This must have been in his DNA for he passed it on to me and it has been the driving force behind Asna, the organisation that proactively works to bridge the gulf between contemporary art and traditional craft.
A UN deputation took him to Indonesia in 1963 for 10 months. On his return we were intrigued by the huge wooden crates that came off the ship with his luggage.
As we saw them being opened with great excitement, it did not surprise us to see huge paintings and wooden sculptures from Bali emerge from within. My father had spent a small fortune on this first serious art for the family.
The trip had turned him into a fan of Balinese culture and he shared its exquisite charm in such a compelling way that it inspired each one of his children to visit the island paradise many decades later with their families. He too kept his promise to take my mother there and returned to Bali some three decades after his first visit.
Always an enthusiastic and analytic student of history, travel to him meant retracing and touching history, and his post-retirement job in Jeddah provided him the opportunity to do so. The two places that I remember him speaking with great emotion and marvel were his visits to a Native American reservation in Arizona and the Red City in Jordan.
Books were his constant companions. In later years, when the doctors’ and hospital visits were long and frequent his reading material accompanied him everywhere.
His appetite for good books was insatiable and he constantly discarded the ones he found wanting along with the pulp fiction he read almost simultaneously with serious biographies and literary tomes. The local club libraries were usually the recipient of his largesse.
In the weeks that preceded his death, he had asked his children and grandchildren to select and take away the books they would like from his collection.
We were not keen to empty his always full shelves so the books remain in the place where he put them. His was equally sensitive to other people’s attachment to their books. Once when he made extensive notes in a book of mine, he insisted on getting a replacement, ignoring my plea that there was no need to do so.
Ancient and contemporary world history and Urdu literature featured high on his reading list and one can find many famous Urdu anthologies on his bookshelves that he revisited over the years.
It was his greatest lament that none of his children had the fluency or knowledge to enjoy Urdu literature to the fullest.
Aboo, as his children called him, put high premium on education, which for him, like many of his generation helped them to leave behind the insular orthodoxy of the Indian Muslim community.
Lucknow University became the institution that intellectually groomed him to leave behind his ancestral town of Etawah to carve out a future in the nascent Pakistan, to build a career in the Pakistan Navy.
He insisted education and awareness were the most effective tools against bigotry and would often recall his university where the only religious divide existed in separate kitchens.
Yet many Hindu friends still joined the Muslim minority for meals turning a deaf ear to cries of disapproval, even at the height of communal disturbances in pre-Partition India. A gentle soul, he abhorred violence and once rescued a woman from being brutally beaten in front of our gate by getting her husband arrested.
Just over 80 years of age, when my father, Syed Shahid Hussain, passed away he left behind a remarkable yet quiet personal legacy of optimism and tolerance and a home full of cherished symbols of the creative human spirit.
The writer is an art critic, independent curator, art activist and editor of ‘Nukta Art’.
asnaclay06@yahoo.com
Scotland Yard probe report
Ibrat
THE Scotland Yard probe team report said that Ms Bhutto died of severe head injuries sustained from the effect of the bomb blast, not by gunfire.
This is not the first time that Scotland Yard has probed a case here. Earlier, Scotland Yard investigators probed the murder of the first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, but the report was never published.
Later, the murder of Mir Murtaza Bhutto was also probed by Scotland Yard officials, but they left the investigation halfway when Benazir’s government was dismissed.
After the murder of Benazir Bhutto, the place where the incident took place was washed, hence all evidence on the ground was removed, although the need was to preserve each and every piece of evidence on the spot. The second lapse was not to conduct an autopsy on her body. This, too, was the responsibility of the government.
The PPP also disagreed with the findings of the report as it had already rejected it as it was being conducted under the supervision of the government. The PPP has sent some important evidence and video clips to the UN demanding a probe by that body, as the Al Qaeda, allegedly behind the killing, is an international organisation.
People want to know the identity of the culprits: who the suicide bomber and the person who opened fire were, and who masterminded this plan. People want to know who was behind the incident and why they killed Benazir. Neither the PPP nor the people agree with the report.
Rather, this report has further increased apprehensions. The video footage showing the attacker only two metres away from Benazir…was captured by TV cameras.
The report is not satisfactory, and there is a need to have a UN commission conduct the probe. — (Feb 9)
Calling back army officers
Hilal-i-Pakistan
THE decision taken at a conference of the corps commanders to recall army officers deputed to civilian posts is laudable. The conference also observed that the holding of free and fair elections was the responsibility of the election commission, while the army could be called out for maintaining law and order.
The appointment of army officers to civil posts on a large scale was being criticised and viewed as taking away army officers from defence positions to intervene in civil matters. This was not in the interest of defence either.
The posting of army officers to civilian jobs was affecting their professional capabilities, while their continuity in such posts for a long time was dragging them into politics.
Such appointments also discouraged the civil bureaucracy, and there was a strong feeling that the government was not considering these civil bureaucrats as capable of handling issues of governance and management.
There is no dearth of senior, experienced and capable civil officers who can handle such issues. The civil administration has its own working style, which is close to the common man’s approach and that cannot be governed under army discipline as this sector’s requirements are quite different.
It is also a fact that the government was spending a large budget on civil administration, but this was not given a chance to work…The intervention of the army in civil affairs…affects the reputation of the army.
The change in policy can be termed as positive and it was the need of the hour that officers in civilian posts be called back immediately and assigned duties in defence positions. — (Feb 9)
— Selected and translated by Sohail Sangi