| July 24, 2008 | Thursday | Rajab 20, 1429 |
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Idea about history
Nation or friendship?
This is going too much far
Cherry polish, Cherry polish
PM’s address
Cheaper imports?
Awnser to Fata problem
Blaming ISI
Readers are requested to restrict their comments to a maximum of 400 words. We reserve the right to edit letters for reasons of clarity and space. Letters, including those by e-mail, should carry the complete postal address of the sender. The views expressed in these columns do not necessarily reflect the views of the newspaper.—Editor
PRIME Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani deserves thanks for a Rs30 billion loan to help increase agricultural production in the country (July 20). One has to see how far it reaches the small farmers who form majority in the country. Our agricultural research and extension services are still far from satisfactory.
First, their pay scales and other incentives to the workers are not commensurate with their arduous work. Thus, better qualified and productive scientists are rarely attracted to agricultural professions.
Second, the cost of key inputs like the chemical fertilisers, pesticides, and quality seeds is so prohibitive that small farmers cannot afford. Like the key inputs, supply of water to the small farmers is denied and another deterrent to production are unforeseen adverse weather conditions, against which much cannot be done.
Third, the research and extension workers get little opportunities to update themselves in their respective areas of research in any agriculturally advanced country. Research workers, it is observed, are not rewarded for their achievements, which is also a discouraging factor.
Here it may be recalled that former prime minister Shaukat Aziz had lately announced that the Central Cotton Research Institute, Multan, would be raised to the status of an International Cotton Research Institute.
No one knows whether the CRI, Multan, has been raised to that standard or the decision has been just shelved.
The Pakistan Central Cotton Committee which had its headquarters on M.T. Khan Road, Karachi, for over 50 years has lately been deprived of its location and structures to relocate the US consulate in Karachi.
The PCCC having no alternative shifted to Hussain Centre – a commercial plaza – on Sharea Faisal, Karachi. Quite recently, it is said to have shifted again to another site near the National Stadium for lack of its own building, which is now only a dream.
When national research institutes are held in such high esteem, what to speak of research facilities and staffing of the research workers that is hardly half of the sanctioned staff.
Had the ministry of food and agriculture been headed by a technocrat, things like this would not have happened and our agricultural research would have marched ahead.
Dr Norman Borlog brought ‘Green Revolution’ in the Third World countries by his wheat varieties, but we could not keep this euphoria. Why?
Our agricultural research and extension services perhaps need another Borlog to come to uplift our agriculture, which is still regarded as the backbone of our economy.
The country’s agricultural output is bound to step up if the aforesaid hurdles in its way are removed to the satisfaction of the researchers and the end-users. If the research and extension workers are satisfied, our crop targets are attainable under the normal weather conditions.
We can then not only be self-sufficient in our food, but the surplus can also be exported to earn foreign exchange without any fear or favour.
M. SHAFIQUE AHMED
Karachi
“If you look at history, you lose one eye. If you ignore history, you lose both eyes”.— A Russian proverb.
I agree with your editorial, ‘A distorted history’ (July 10), that “royal historians and chroniclers bankrolled by despots necessarily be biased in favour of their patrons and, as a result, history gets distorted”.
This, however, applies to the period till media explosion of the 20th century engulfed the world and the dependence of formal history writing on court historians was shaken. However, in the case history of Pakistan, it is a matter of double jeopardy, as even the half-baked account of the past was replaced by the first martial law regime with social studies.
The history taught in the educational institutions as a subject was withdrawn. The highhandedness with a subject such as history, mother of all social sciences, consequently left the people of Pakistan in the second category of losers.
So much so that the Qauid’s birthplace, which was taught in the books of Sindh Textboard and National Book Foundation as Jherruk, a modest town located on the left bank of the river Indus at a distance of 30 miles from Thatta was changed to Wazir Mansion, Karachi.
This sudden change gave rise to controversies that remained unresolved till today. According to a latest research conducted by Kaleem Lashari (Special Initiatives, Sindh), excerpts of which appeared in Dawn (‘Karachi: Wazir Mansion is not Quaid’s birthplace’, Feb 14, 2007), the building of Wazir Mansion, which was later on officially claimed as the Quaid’s birthplace, is proved to have been constructed much after his birth.
The committees of experts formed to determine the actual location of the Quaid’s birthplace in 1990 and 1996 could not wrap up their findings due to change of the governments.
Thus for the last 50 years the young generations have been taught tunnel vision of history, leaving them deprived of the benefits of authentic information of our past, a condition extremely disadvantageous in this competitive world.
When students leave institutions after completing their education, they find themselves ill-equipped to deal with complicated socio-economic issues requiring in-depth study of history of such subjects. The dilemma of ignorance turns more serious when the young aspirants apply for higher education in some foreign university.
I concur with Dr Ali (‘History is different from farce’, July 9) that no country could progress in any field unless it has learned its past: in actuality and not in charade and concoction to suit some vested interest.
Keeping in view this disclosure, the authorities, especially education ministries/departments and the Higher Education Commission have to acknowledge the alarming state of education and take remedial measures lest it is too late to recover what the nation has already lost.
On the one hand, the present-day media explosion has enriched the people with enormous knowledge and, on the other hand, Internet and email facilities have transformed the world into a ‘global village’, providing vast research facilities to the doorstep of every household.
In these circumstances the proposal for establishing independent institutions at the federal and the provincial level, headed by eminent scholars and intellectuals, to conduct research and rewrite history with objectivity to retrace our past for the benefit of posterity is the most viable option.
ALTAMASH M. KURESHI
Karachi
IN her letter, `Partition and friendship' (July 15), Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan has commemorated the death of her old friend Suvira Mann, who, along with her husband K. C. Mann, member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India, used to live in Lahore until their migration to India after the partition.
Ms Khan is very upset after learning of her friend's death in a tragic way and sorely laments the fact that she is unable to go across (presumably due to visa restrictions). Very emotionally, she writes:
“I feel like a prisoner who is in self confinement with no crime to vouch for this sentence in a mental penitentiary .... I now realise with ample pain that our land was butchered and aimlessly cut into pieces. We cannot reach out to those we love in times of stress and grief.”
I am amazed at her emotionalism and obvious regret that India got divided, thereby bringing Pakistan into existence. It amounts to belittling the intelligence of Jinnah (who had so eloquently articulated the necessity of creating a separate country for the Muslims), Iqbal, the other founding fathers and the 10 million Muslim refugees who made immense sacrifices to make this country a reality, besides the nearly one million who got massacred. Those who were already living here can hardly understand what hell the immigrants had gone through.
I was born in this free and beloved country of mine. But my parents had migrated from India in 1947. My father, who would have been in his 30s at the time, had opposed the desire of a family elder (the latter being swayed by the Maulana Azad camp) to reach his new homeland. He remained a staunch Pakistani for the rest of his life and the only time in his life I saw him cry was after the fall of Dhaka in 1971.
My mother once showed me a rosary given to her by a Hindu lady friend of hers. Which she was still holding fondly many years later. But, in her nearly six decades spent in Pakistan, she never even once had any regrets about their decision to come here. Am I glad that they came here!
Almost everyone has friendships — I have had Indian and other non-Muslim friends — some of which may be cherished, but putting one’s buddies ahead of the welfare of tens of millions of Muslims and their desire to live in a free and independent country, where they could live according to their own way of life without hindrance, is not understandable.
A PAKISTANI
Karachi
THIS relates to Syed Iqbal Ahmad’s article, ‘NRO and the politics of plunder’ (July 19).
I was also writing an article on the subject but it has been beaten to the post. No complaint though. Syed has done a better job than I could. I do, however, have some additional observations: President Musharraf has, under the NRO, bartered away billions looted from a hungry and thirsty nation. He has also condoned hundreds of murders of the kith and kin of a vanquished people sinking in a whirlpool of lawlessness. Is this not treason?
The spin doctors of the current rulers brazenly insist that the cases withdrawn under the NRO were false as there was no conviction for eight years. They of course do not admit that there was no acquittal either, that cases here normally go on for years and the delay is always caused by the defendant, by feigning illness or absconding.
It is also claimed that detention even in a five-star hospital, with nominal restrictions and VIP treatment, including first class travel at government expense and police escorts during frequent releases on parole, amounts to sacrifice for the nation.
It does not matter that the incarceration was for murder and corruption, not political offences. If this is allowed, then the thousands of criminals rotting in jails for anything from 10 to 40 years and the lately released Kashmir Singh, who did 35 years, have greater claim to high positions than those occupying them now.
Indeed there has been deep moral, social and political degeneration since Zia days. But this is going much too far!
SARDAR MUMTAZ ALI BHUTTO
Chairman, SNF
Karachi
CHILDREN fear to go in the dark because they can’t stand to their guns even in shadows. They adore playing in the gardens because buds turn to bloom touched by kids sporting and skipping in the orchards. Children fly in the skies to catch the full moon since they are unworldly and fanciful. They are often seen running in the flowery precincts while flirting with gorgeous butterflies. They love to sing in the gardens because skykarks yearn to dance with the tune.
But I was stuck with amusement and then my eyes were bedewed with tears when I caught a glimpse of Kheyaal, a 10-year-old guy. The instant question which sprang to my mind was to ascertain about the gross error he ever committed on the Earth. His tale is real but gloomy. His story is true but a blot on humanity. Although the fable is unpleasant, yet the factual picture of our merciless society.
The story begins: when Kheyaal rises in the morning and leaves his home with the first flush of dawn, he does not go to any school but steps out to earn money for his family. I saw his hands black with polish instead of ink and colours.
He wears a bag around his neck, but it does not carry any book rather a shoe brush and multi-coloured little polish boxes inside in it. He was shabbily dressed and with fagged shoulders. I could see the dying but twinkling stars in his eyes.
It was difficult for me to know the one who pounced upon all his rights? Who took the shine out of his eyes? Who filled his life with flies and frogs? He narrated that he was just three, when his father breathed his last. His mother is partially paralysed. He is the sole breadwinner of his family.
He goes all length to fill the stomach of his critically ailing mother. Kheyaal emphatically expressed his desire to embellish himself with education. So cute of him when he showed me a torn picture of Harry Potter and innocently desired to watch the movie. I found him more sensitive and sharp for his age.
He is a little kid, yet a man of strong moral fibre. He is a little boy, yet not a milksop, but a man of tried mettle and proven worth. One thing which would always bob my heart up and down was the slogan he used to make: Cherry polish , Cherry polish.
He left but I couldn’t have a wink of sleep the whole night; meditating as to who should be taken to task for the misery of Kheyaal. Let’s peep into our hearts and minds and answer this question.
SAJJAD AHMAD KHAN
Via email
YOUR editorial commentary of July 21, ‘More promises, no action’ on the prime minister’s seemingly reluctant message to the nation was gracious yet apt. Speaking to the nation at tumultuous times through a halting delivery, least confidence, vision or a stately foresight, hecatapulted us and perhaps the nation in ever greater abyss of hopelessness and uncertainty, to say the least. How I wish Mr Gilani may not have addressed the nation, something should better be left undone!
SALEEM JADOON
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
ALLOWING imports of over 1,900 items on various concessions from India is the trade policy of the government of Pakistan in order to have cheaper imports to enhance exports.
True it may be, but the Indians are not that unwise to let Pakistan improve its export at their cost and thus confronting unnecessary competition. There could be a hidden agenda which our industrialist commerce minister kept undisclosed from the nation.
M.ASIF DAR
Karachi
NATO, it seems, is about to invade Fata. In the event Pakistan’s government will make loud noises but what can they really do to stop the most powerful war machine on the planet? Although an invasion would essentially be an act of war, would the Pakistan Army then throw itself against the foreign invader as it is duty-bound to do? Troubling questions these.
I suggest an alternative solution: why not simply cede Fata to Nato administration a la Kosovo? When has Fata been more than a part of Pakistan on paper alone? A part of the country de jure yes, but where only the pluckiest or the most well-guarded Pakistanis could venture (and now not even them).
It is a territory with virtually no contribution to the national economy, where the law of the land never applied. Fata has been useful only to smugglers, drug lords and crime lords of all sorts as a safe haven from where they could comfortably establish their crime empires across the country.
Now it is a home base for highly trained militants and terrorists as well. Only the federal government ever had any authority in Fata but their sole notable contribution there was to rent out the region to American interests as a launch pad.
I know that for many countrymen the immediate response to this suggestion would be outrage. How can we just hand over a large part of our holy land? No self-respecting country simply cedes a part of its sovereign territory. The answer to troubled regions is to invest in their development so that they have a reason to reject extremism. Right? Wrong, simply because it is too late for all that now. That was the answer for possibly the first 50 years or at least until the Afghan war but it was callously ignored. Self-respect is a consideration for those countries which have the strength to afford it. We never really did unfortunately.
SHEHZAD SHAH
Karachi
THIS is apropos of Q. Iqbal’s letter (July 21). He complains that India always blames the ISI for any mischief that takes place in India. However, how can we complain about it when all Pakistanis continue to blame it for all types of killings, kidnappings and bomb blasts?
Is it not time we recognised the extremist or sectarian groups which have defamed Islam and brought our country to the brink of extinction? If we continue to believe in mindboggling conspiracy theories, we shall never recognise our true enemies who believe such atrocities are their religious obligation.
KHALID A
London UK
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