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| May 05, 2008 | Monday | Rabi-us-Sani 28, 1429 |
The ‘shopper’ menace
Capital’s new transit
OTHER VOICES - North American Press
Education and politics of exclusion
Improving public services
HUMAN history is replete with the struggles of different interest groups with each other. Marx views history as a constant class struggle where different classes are engaged in tactics to acquire, sustain and resist power.
THE previous government’s priority was economic growth. There was hardly a day when this mantra was not repeated in the media.
THE coalition government appears to be going the extra mile to resolve the grievances of the Baloch. Since April when the prime minister announced that he would convene an All Parties Conference on Balochistan, the government has taken many confidence-building measures to reassure the Baloch that their demands are being addressed. Thus the cases against several high-profile leaders who had seemingly been arrested on political grounds have been dropped. The BNP leader, Sardar Akhtar Mengal, and the general secretary of the party were acquitted by the Balochistan High Court. Earlier, an anti-terrorism court exonerated Senator Shahid Bugti. But most significant is the latest move by Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani to call a halt to the military operation in the province that has been in a state of siege since 2004.
While these moves should have a mollifying effect on the conflict-ridden region, the real test of the government’s good intentions will come when the hundreds of detained political workers of the province are released as promised by the adviser to the prime minister on security issues. Mr Rahman Malik has also promised to help locate the numerous missing people who are believed to have been picked up by intelligence agencies. The case of the ‘disappeared’ persons has over time assumed a gravity well beyond what was ever expected, given the sensitive nature of the problem and its implications for human rights. Seen against this backdrop, the latest gestures will be welcomed as a positive development. They will, one hopes, evoke a favourable response from the hard-liners and break the deadlock to facilitate a dialogue.
Now that the province has an elected government of its own — a pretty heavyweight one with 35 members in the cabinet — one hopes that it will get down to the brass tacks so that Balochistan’s numerous problems are taken up in earnest. The leaders in Islamabad and Quetta are saying the right things in an attempt to promote reconciliation at every level. A spirit of give and take is, no doubt, essential to bring various leaders together to the negotiating table to sort out the issues that are basically of an economic nature. But this process appears to be moving rather too slowly — the 10 days within which the APC was to be convened have passed — and the groundwork is still to be completed. Meanwhile, the militants continue to be active. Railway tracks were blown up twice within 24 hours last week cutting off Quetta from the rest of the country. The MI was attacked twice within four days and two of its personnel killed. A few days before that, the pro-vice chancellor of Balochistan University was shot dead. Once the negotiations start, one hopes that the militants will consider it wiser strategy to stop shooting and join the political process.
THE problem lies in enforcement and a general unwillingness to change our ways and do what is right. Despite a ban in all four provinces, polythene shopping bags of proscribed thicknesses are still being manufactured, sold and used throughout the country. As many have pointed out, the ubiquitous ‘shopper’ is not simply another piece of rubbish in our already filthy towns and cities. Its unchecked proliferation poses grave civic, health and environmental problems that will only multiply over time. Once used and carelessly discarded, these polythene bags become public property that not even scavengers want and end up choking sewerage and drainage systems, causing gutters and drains to overflow. This raises serious sanitation and hygiene issues in a cash-strapped country where municipal services and healthcare facilities are inadequate as it is. Disease-carrying flies and mosquitoes breed in this gutter water and thrive on the food and liquid residue in carelessly disposed shoppers — most of which, incidentally, are not food grade either.
Polythene shopping bags are also a major component of the solid waste generated by Pakistani towns and cities. When they are burned at dumping sites, and in our case even by the roadside, these bags release deadly dioxins and furans that can cause or exacerbate respiratory and skin problems, and could also lead to cancer. Even if buried, conventional polythene bags will pollute the soil from here to eternity. Land, riverine and marine animals, including endangered species, have also been known to choke to death on polythene bags mistaken for food.
Every official drive to ban thin polythene bags has fizzled out soon after its launch. Following a similar ordinance issued earlier in the year, the Sindh Assembly passed a bill on Nov 15, 2006, banning the manufacture, sale and use of polythene bags less than 30 microns thick. Then came a serious crackdown in Karachi in March 2007 but that too faltered after a few weeks. Since then officials and public representatives have engaged in mere lip service with no action on the ground. Among the culprits are official apathy and a lack of political will, manpower and physical resources. Shutting down manufacturers of thin polythene bags will certainly add to joblessness in these testing times but that concern can be addressed in part through government incentives for switching to the production of paper bags, which are costlier in terms of raw material as well as labour requirements. Every official effort is bound to fail, however, if consumers refuse to forsake convenience even when it comes at great cost.
FINALLY, residents in Islamabad can look forward to a new bus-based public transportation system that is expected to commence soon. Unlike the previous state-operated bus transit system of the 1970s and 1980s, or its successors the privately operated myriad of wagons and coaches which have been at the receiving end of public ire in recent years, the new bus system will be run on a public-private partnership basis. Considering that public transportation is often costly and poorly managed, while a purely private system is usually unprofitable and therefore fails to attract investors, a public-private partnership is considered to be a better system. A private company is expected to manage the project better because its livelihood and profits depend on it, while public funding and cooperation will help provide a more reliable low-cost system.
Ideally, transportation policy ought to comprise the two competing philosophies of road and mass transit development. In recent years, however, transportation planners in Islamabad have been focusing their efforts on increasing road capacity. As the increase in population and cars led to higher demand on Islamabad’s road system, the city authorities concentrated funds on numerous road projects — building wider, high-volume avenues, overpasses and underpasses — as the solution to Islamabad’s congestion problem. But this car-dependent transportation system is inefficient during peak hours while the poor service provided by the privately-run wagons and coaches cannot attract car users. Although a rail-based transit system is also being established in Islamabad, this will take some years to materialise. A bus system can be implemented easily since it requires no special infrastructure. Besides, a bus service is necessary to complement a rail-based system because of its greater accessibility. However, for the new bus system to succeed, we must not only maintain the quality of buses and bus stops and ensure that it serves enough locations within the federal territory, but must also combat the longstanding negative perception of public transportation as a downmarket phenomenon. An advertisement campaign through the electronic and print media can help to upgrade the image of the new public transportation system.
Disenfranchise away
The Boston Globe
SIX justices of the US Supreme Court dealt a major blow to voting rights and fair elections … when they upheld an Indiana law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. This 2005 law supposedly combats fraud, but plaintiffs argued rightly that it makes voting harder for poor, elderly and disabled citizens without photo IDs.
… The ruling is likely to frustrate certain constitutional challenges to laws that impede access to the polls. And it may further embolden legislators to seek partisan advantage by jimmying a state’s electoral rules.
… In this era of 50-50 politics, one party gains a major advantage if it can pick off a small sliver of voters. And photo ID laws have the effect of discouraging groups of voters who are presumed to lean Democratic.
… [T]he ID laws might still be helpful if there were an epidemic of so-called ‘in-person’ voting fraud. But as [one judge] concedes, “The record contains no evidence of any such fraud.”...
…Voting is a fundamental right. ID rules should be no more stringent than is necessary to keep the voting process secure and orderly. — (May 2)
Reserving the redwoods
San Francisco Chronicle
THE 145-year era of Pacific Lumber may be eking slowly and painfully towards a close, but the fate of more than 200,000 acres of Douglas fir and redwood forests in Humboldt County remains — maddeningly — uncertain.
After 15 bitter months of shifting alliances, legal wrangling and mediation, the multiple parties tangled up in the timber company’s bankruptcy may finally close a deal in a matter of days.
A conservation easement would preserve this forest’s beauty and majesty for generations to come — and it needn’t have negative impacts on shareholders’ bottom lines, either. The Nature Conservancy is eager to work with the new owners to buy an easement at fair market rates, making the idea a win-win for everyone.
Fortunately, these trees have a long history with environmentalists and activists … [and] the future of this forest is certainly important enough for concerned local citizens to make their preferences clear … When the deal … has finally been done, we urge the new owners to promptly agree to a conservation easement. — (May 2)
A more recent interpretation is offered by Bourdieu, a French thinker, who believes that the constant human struggle is for social distinction which establishes itself through culture and education.
A number of ways and means are adopted to gain supremacy and dominance over other groups. One fundamental means is to construct ‘others’ by excluding them. The process of exclusion is constituted by the use of various social institutions including educational institutions, lawmaking organisations, interpretations of religion, and the media.
Before we move ahead, let us look at some daily life examples of exclusion. Historically, the caste system was a powerful system of exclusion where a certain caste was completely barred from the ‘respectable’ chores of life. This lower class was the class of ‘untouchables’ and arrangements were made to keep them at a distance. This desire of excluding others is reflected in different forms. For instance, in most public offices in Pakistan, washrooms for officers and staff are separate and staff members are strictly banned from using the officers’ washroom. In most toll plazas in Pakistan, army personnel are exempted from payment.
Until recently, 98 per cent of the population was excluded from politics by the passage of a law that made a Bachelor’s degree mandatory for contesting elections to the national and provincial assemblies. In 2008, a number of interested candidates could not participate because of this condition. Another concept linked to exclusion is ‘silencing’ where a certain group is pushed to the extent where it is deprived of the opportunity to voice its feelings. The structures are designed through language, education and culture in such a manner that marginalised groups do not come up to ‘standards’ and are thus discouraged socially from participating in politics and power.
A pertinent example is the silencing of women in the domain of literature in the past. Women were not expected to write. Literature was considered not worthy of ‘ladies’. Virginia Woolf talks about periods of silence in the history of women’s writing. She focuses on 16th century England when “the dramatists and poets were most active, but the women were dumb”.
In all the above examples, one point is common: the rules were set by the powerful. These rules were bound to favour the interests of dominant groups and marginalised groups always fell short of these standards or norms. The dominant groups in society are not necessarily representing the majority. It is power that gives them the ‘right’ to set the rules of the game. It is to the advantage of the dominant groups to monopolise the fruits of power by depriving the ‘others’. Mutual differences are highlighted, and at times created, to exclude others.
According to Virginia Woolf, “law and custom were of course largely responsible for these strange intermissions of silence and speech”. Other important factors include education and language. These play an important part in constructing, legitimising and perpetuating certain stereotypes which are based on labelling and categories. These categories are constructed in such a manner that one category appears superior while the other looks inferior, e.g. good and bad, superior and inferior, etc.
The makers of these categories are usually the dominant groups in society who possess the discourse and ‘legitimate knowledge’. This legitimacy of knowledge is certified by the socially accepted educational institutions in society. The hegemony coming from educational institutions through a certain brand of education is so powerful that Bourdieu rightly calls it ‘symbolic violence’.
Class differences, boundaries and categories are constructed and perpetuated by the educational system in an effective manner. The market value of students taking their ‘A’ level exam is far greater than of those who sit for local intermediate exams. Similarly, private educational institutions are more in demand than public-sector institutions. Education that needs to lead us to bridge the differences is not only sustaining them but is also widening the gap. Ultimately, people with meagre resources are excluded as they are deprived of the opportunity of getting into such educational institutions.
In Pakistan, we see an educational system which is full of segregations. There are public schools, elite English-medium schools, cadet colleges, forces’ educational institutions (army public schools, fazaia schools, etc), Urdu-medium schools, lower English-medium schools and street schools. Then we have schools for the elite ruling class like Aitchison College and Lawrence College that only the children of elite class can enter. These different segregated educational systems are strengthening class boundaries.
There is a serious need to reduce the artificial differences which are being constructed and perpetuated by education and our social practices. This, we must appreciate, is a challenging task. Every government announces its intention of introducing a one-uniform system of education in Pakistan with an identical curriculum for all institutions. But like many other political statements this has not been implemented, the reason being that we cannot plan effective strategies in education unless we recognise socio-political realities.
Education cannot be improved in isolation unless there is support available from the socio-political set-up in the country. This fact must be kept in view while planning projects for the qualitative improvement of education. One central problem with Pakistan’s educational system is that all major decisions at the policy and implementation levels emanate from the rulers’ short-term political interests. There is a lack of consistency in policies. Every new government, instead of improving implementation, immediately embarks on the preparation of a new education policy.
One of the reasons for not achieving the goal of meaningful and sustainable change is ad hoc political arrangements which encourage gimmicks in the name of educational change. The result is that the existing educational system is still acting as a catalyst for the process of exclusion and widening class differences.
The writer is director of Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences at Lahore School of Economics and author of Rethinking Education in Pakistan.
shahidksiddiqui@yahoo.com
Howsoever sound the macro-economic fundamentals for the rich, the poor could not identify themselves with ‘Glossy Pakistan’. Acute shortages of essential food items and price hikes on election eve, whether orchestrated or real, put the final nail in the coffin of the previous government.
The new government has not started with tabula rasa or a clean slate. It carries historical baggage and is conditioned by the global economic and business environment. However, it can still take steps to improve public services for the poor. The basic issue here is not the availability of resources. Rather in most cases, the infrastructure is there.
We have hospitals, Basic Health Units and schools built not only in urban but also in many rural areas. These may not be of a high standard, but most of them do have the basic amenities available. The issue is not ‘hardware’ but ‘software’ — management of the available resources.
It is not that the buildings or desks or chairs are not important. Our primary complaint is about the quality of the syllabus and teachers. In a government hospital, what pinches us is the fact that we feel ignored and insulted when we visit one. In our big cities, decent public transport is like the emperor’s new clothes. Not many can see government contribution to it. There is a need to re-engineer the way public services are delivered to the people.
Education: Anyone who has the means would send his kids to a private school. We all know and observe that most private schools have been housed in rented buildings meant for residence. The teachers are mostly girls who may not even be graduates. In most of the cases, they are not well-paid either. However, since these schools work in a ‘market’, they cater for the needs of their ‘clients’. Teaching of English and/or the Quran is made available from day one and we are made to believe that our children are given personal attention. We are also confident that the teacher will not be absent from class.
Compare the private schools to government schools. Buildings are likely to be old and the furniture shabby. In many instances, buildings may be insufficient and furniture totally missing. That is a cause for worry, but what is more mortifying to note is that teachers in most cases are least interested in teaching. English, which is now synonymous with good education, is not given priority.
There is no arrangement for nadhra or hifz of the Quran. The schools, in other words, do not cater for the demands of the market. They are free but a choice of the last resort.
What we need to do is to create a synergy between providers and customers. Change the syllabus in line with the needs of the day. Improve the quality of teachers by paying them better salaries. Every year, we waste millions of rupees on donor-funded projects, but continue to pay the teachers meagre salaries. It is time to create a different salary structure for them and make this job a first choice for the best minds.
There is a need to activate parent-teacher councils that are supposed to exist with designated functions and responsibilities. Only parents of students studying in that school should be its members. These councils should act as a liaison between parents, schools and the education department, and give a sense of ownership and participation to everyone.
Teachers should be recruited for schools and not for the district/province. The present practice of transfers should be abolished. It will give the policymakers some time to think about education policy and strategy.
Health: Our government hospitals are chaotic like our traffic on the road. Visit to a government hospital means spending the whole day there. No doubt, there is a need for walk-in clinics, but it should also be possible to book an appointment on a time and date mutually convenient. We must also have a patient’s charter that defines the rights and responsibilities of both the hospital and the patient.
All over the world, public private partnership has been adopted to upgrade facilities in hospitals. Expensive medical equipment is procured by the private sector and is used in a government hospital for a fee. We should also capitalise on its potential to the advantage of the common man.
Public transport: When it comes to public transport, we will undoubtedly be at the bottom of any league table. Consumers have been left at the mercy of the transport mafiosi whose lobby has scuttled every attempt to regulate them. Availability of a decent integrated public transport is a litmus test for the effectiveness of any government in this country. Cities like Karachi, Lahore, Faisalabad and Rawalpindi/Islamabad are bursting at the seams and there is no respite from the daily ordeal of the public transport mess. Neither underpasses nor overhead bridges will help resolve the problem of the poor. Signal-free corridors are for the rich to whiz past in their cars.
The poor need underground/overhead metro. They need new and modern buses. There have been tall claims by every government, but nothing came out of any initiative. If nothing is possible, the government should at least take one step: it should make it mandatory for everyone responsible for the public transport system in the city to use it everyday. None of them must use official or private cars under any circumstances.
We do not need greenfield projects like New Islamabad Airport. The image of a country is built more by its healthy and educated working class than grand projects. Even otherwise, a democratically elected prime minister should be more interested in the general welfare of the many rather than a few. There is no shame if we do not have the best airport in the capitals of the world, but it is a real disgrace if the capital of the country cannot boast of a couple of government schools that are everyone’s first choice.
The prime minister, I hope, knows that people are not fools; they understand when a government takes decisions for their benefit. He can hope that improvement in the provision of public services will, in the long run, compensate for the rise in fuel and food prices in the country.
The writer is a Visiting Fulbright Scholar from Islamabad, currently based in the University of Florida.
iramkhan@fulbrightweb.org
