| October 27, 2008 | Monday | Shawwal 27, 1429 |
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If I had my way
Foreign exchange crisis
Staring into the abyss
High fees hit CMC students
Task force on climate change
Indian help
Disabled people
CPLC offers help
Is an era of market capitalism over?
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
YOUR editorial, ‘Private schools’ regulation’ (Oct 18), addresses one of the (many) key issues education faces in Pakistan, but does not cover the issue of private schools in its entirety. Yes, the fee structure must be regulated in private schools and, yes, the proliferation of private schools and the related issues of high fees, tuition mafia, and teaching quality are associated with the ever-deteriorating state of public education in Pakistan.
However, it is extremely important to examine public and private schools from the institutional perspectives within which these schools function.
Parents and students have the right to free education (at primary and upper primary levels), but at the same time, they have little leverage to realise their own choice of education.
Public education in Pakistan is under-resourced. In addition, it is plagued with political problems, curriculum and textbook delivery problems, access and quality issues, and crumbling infrastructure.
Private schools’ institutional settings, on the other hand, are distinguished by the attributes of the market — decentralisation, competition, and choice. Unlike public schools, private schools have autonomy and clarity of mission.
Teacher professionalism and strong leadership are more prevalent in private schools than in public schools. Democratic control, under which public schools operate, is inclined to promote bureaucracy that limits public school autonomy and parental choice. Markets, of which private schools are part, tend to endorse autonomy and choice, enabling parents and students to change from one alternative to another.
School choice remains a little known phenomenon in Pakistan due to the absence of government policies encouraging or offering choice. Unlike in the US and many European countries, school choice remains a distant dream for the majority of parents in Pakistan.
The choice between the three parallel education systems — public or government-run schools, private schools and madressahs — is determined by a myriad of social, economic, and political factors.
Limited access to public education, gender disparity in education, the cost of private education in urban centres, and the absence of a policy of public subsidies for non-public and religious schools appears to restrict educational opportunities among which parents could choose for their children.
The declining condition of public schools offers little or no competition to the private sector in Pakistan.
It is primarily this non-competitive environment between public and private schools that gives the private school system an advantageous and exploitative position from where it pulls unjustified benefits such as disproportionate fees in return for education that is, in general, only marginally better than that offered by public schools.
In some rural areas in Balochistan and the NWFP, madressahs — a tier of the private sector providing an education that offers nearly no economic rewards to graduates in the job market — might well be benefiting from the failure of public education as well as from the economic and access constraints faced by many poor parents in parts of both provinces.
Ideally, the government must take revolutionary steps to revamp and improve the public school system, offer public subsidies to non-public schools, and develop a regulatory mechanism for private schools so that that quality education becomes more accessible. Only then it is possible for parents and students to have a genuine choice between viable and meaningful educational options. Given the lack of commitment on the part of the government to invest properly in public education, private schools will continue to proliferate, and exact exploitatively large benefits from this non-competitive educational environment. And given government’s abysmal history of monitoring and regulating public service delivery institutions, I doubt government’s capacity to regulate private school fee structures effectively.
JEHANZAIB KHAN
United States
IF I were the president, soon on assumption of office, I would have acted as follows:
a. I would have refrained from going abroad for, at least, half of my tenure which would have accrued to the dignity of my office. b. I would have sent the government’s chief executive to represent Pakistan at the UN General Assembly.
c. I would have cancelled my US visit and would have quoted the handy excuse of the Marriott tragedy, even if I had been invited. This would have averted the political mistake of Liaquat Ali Khan’s visit to the US, vis-à-vis the former Soviet Union which has caused incalculable damage to Pakistan and, God knows, how long will keep haunting Pakistan.
d. Even if offered, I would have declined the aid of the ‘Friends of Pakistan’. Such aids are never free of strings and it appears that, currently, everyone in the club is striving to have their share in the strings by joining it.
e. Instead, I would have created Pakistan Solvency Fund by generously donating myself (If I were so wealthy) and called upon the rich citizens to follow suit (Not like NS’s Qarz Otaro, Mulk Sawanro and to forget it later on).
f. I would have personally supervised the rescue operations of the Marriott tragedy to inculcate in the people a feeling that I care for my country and countrymen. I would have also personally recorded the shortcomings of all the concerned agencies and taken suitable action accordingly.
g. I would have declined the US visit, even if invited, contending that the calming down of my countrymen against US forces’ violations of our sovereignty was more important.
h. Then, my first visit would have been to the great China (the future superpower), which has been our strategic and tested friend through thick and thin.
i. Besides, I would have strengthened the foundation of our strategic friendship with Iran and with the Central Asian States and thus inched towards Russia, our neighbour and yet again an emerging superpower.
j. Instead of seeking a unilateral strategic depth in Afghanistan, I would have sowed deep friendly relations with that neighbour and would have attained the goal the other way round. This would have helped contain joint strategic goals of our strategic and ideological foes, who plan to encircle Pakistan, China and Russia.
k. At the home front, I would have strived to attain my insidious wish of historically eternal life by most reasonably sacrificing my wealth, beyond my necessity. Therewith I would have established standard educational institutes for the poor to fish out the geniuses amongst them.
l. For national development, I would have enormously invested in power generation, being the foundation of any economic development, and thus would have created jobs as well as promotion of exports, earning foreign exchange and thereby would have tried to attain real freedom.
For power generation, I would have utilised coal resources, built uncontroversial small dams on rivers/canals/pooled rainwater and also atomic energy.
m. I would have followed a simple life as commoners and thus would have been an example to my cabinet and bureaucrats to follow suit which would have saved unnecessary expenditure of uncalculable proportions.
n. The neglect of 60 years has led to the trapping of the uneducated masses in extremism.
I would have launched a uniform and compulsory education programme for all at least up to matriculation, especially for rural Pakistan, and given stipends to all the poor, coupled with adequate punishment to nonparents. This would have freed our future generations from extremism.
MAJID KHAN JADOON
Karachi
THERE is only one group of Pakistanis who are sending foreign exchange to Pakistan. They are the poor labourers or lower middle class expatriates working in foreign countries. They are the only unfortunate ones who get no tax-free favours from the government, nor do their children get subsidised education, health cover or housing from the state.
Our business men, the elite group of civil and military bureaucrats, the political and military establishment are busy buying dollars/euros, and sending all their savings and earnings to foreign bank accounts. Exporters and importers have drained this nation’s foreign exchange reserves by resorting to over-invoicing or under-invoicing.
Foreign scholarships which should be given to students on merit end up being awarded to the offspring of the privileged elite. Take any son or daughter of the ruling establishment and they would have availed a scholarship to top universities of the world, never to return to this country. Jobs in the UN, IMF, World Bank, etc, are exclusive privilege of this elite group of children.
Pakistan suffers because of the greed of the haves, people for whom this country provided an opportunity to mint billions. During the fove year tenure of Shaukat Aziz, the casino-style speculative stock exchange mafia robbed this country of billions of dollars, based on insider trading information.
Instead of investing in production-based industries, the country’s resources were wasted on consumer items like mobiles, luxury limousines and import of private aircraft. Mr Aziz gave a 50 per cent duty rebate to those desirous of importing luxury cars with over 1800cc engine power capacity.
Pakistan’s chattering elite class made billions, along with foreign investors who came in for short-term investment and left with more than triple the foreign exchange they had come in with.
The other major gainer was and still is the broker mafia that has reduced the stock exchange to a fixed casino, where money just rolled into their accounts. Now that the going is bad, they want the state to inject more liquidity, so that they can have the last laugh.
NASIR KHAN
Peshawar
WITH the dire economic straits that we find ourselves in, perhaps the flat refusal of erstwhile friends to continue to bail us out carries a silver lining. For too long both elected and ‘selected’ governments in Pakistan have relied on others to come to our assistance without asking critical or much needed questions on how such assistance is used to benefit those at highest need.
The failure of past experiments with social action programmes, the unequal distribution of wealth over the last nine years and the haphazard response of the current government, all suggest that the poor people of Pakistan will continue to bear the brunt of the economic belt-tightening that is imminent.
Apart from some perfunctory measures to reduce imports, there is little evidence of brave, necessary measures for austerity and public spending. We have one of the largest cabinets in recent memory with no willingness to reduce size, no overt reduction in the number of freebies and trips by government functionaries, running expenditure of the government or elected members of the assemblies.
The majority of our elected representatives opted not to participate in one of the most important debates in the nation’s history, an activity for which they are elected, charged and paid. Yet the government has lost no time in cutting expenditure on higher education and is poised to accept the inevitable IMF formula and structural adjustments for further reducing public spending at the cost of vanishing social protection nets.
It is a grave folly to mistake the conflict that now engulfs almost all our northwest border areas as a mere ideological conflict; the combination of disenfranchisement, grinding poverty, social exclusion and a mindless conflict is fertile ground for a revolution not unlike the one seen in our western neighbour some three decades ago.
The response of our elected government to this economic emergency may well determine the trajectory for the ‘war on terror’ and winning hearts and minds of the growing number of young people who view the conflict as a last resort to attaining social justice and getting rid of the elitist form of governance that has become our wont.
ZULFIQAR A. BHUTTA
Karachi
CAN you ever imagine that fees of public sector medical institutes can increase up to 150 per cent and that too in just one year . Oh my God! I never did. You don’t have to go far away, just have a look at a college in the interior of Sindh, like the Chandka Medical College (CMC), Larkana , going to be a university with the name of a great leader, Benazir Bhutto.
The unwanted decision of the health secretary is arbitrarily imposed on the students, majority of whom are the ones who cannot even afford their monthly expenses. How come, they will pay Rs25,000 annually.
There is no such increase of fees in other medical institutes of Pakistan. This seems to be a conspiracy against poor Sindhi students.
In European countries like Poland and Germany, their administrations do not even ask for any fees from their people. In Pakistan though the government is supposed to decrease the fees in view of the high inflation, it has increased the same to a great extent. We appeal to higher authorities to look into the matter and provide relief to the students who are hindered by inflated tuition fees.
FOURTH YEAR STUDENT
Larkana
FROM a report in your paper (Oct 14) I have come to know that a task force has been set up by the planning commission to suggest guidelines for minimising the effect of climate change on agriculture (Oct 14).
The climate change is due to the increasing emission of greenhouse gas (GHG), responsible for global warming and rise in temperature. As mentioned in the report, the task force will look into changing paedological, hydrological and physiological processes (seasonal cropping pattern) on account of the ensuing climate change.
FAO, in the forthcoming decade on agriculture (2010), has concentrated on the expected increase in human population and the associated demands on water resources to provide with the necessary food, fibre, animal feed, forest products and living space. Global warming is causing climate change which is manifested in rising sea levels, droughts, floods, damage to agriculture, harm to the natural ecosystem and to the species of plants and animals.
The government of President Bush didn’t agree to comply with the Kyoto Protocol (for reducing the CO2 emission) in their national interest (industrialisation). Now on the perception and pinch of climate change the USA and developed countries are asking the poor developing countries to place restriction on the energy use to help cope up with the global warming and climate change.
In this regard the pertinent question is how much carbon dioxide (CO2) Nitrons Oxide (N2O), chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) and methane (CH4) are being emitted in Pakistan to add to the global warming and climate change.
Negligible on a global basis. Low GHG emissions from poor developing countries like Pakistan has made it possible to sustain the high energy consumption by heavily industrialised countries on a global basis.
In the aforesaid circumstances what action by the task force of Pakistan can be suggested as a guideline for limiting/containing the global warming and climate change.
We are not a player of melting Himalayan glaciers and depleting sweet water recourses. We import $3 billion’s worth of foodgrains, food products and edible oil annually for our sustenance.
Through these columns I would, therefore, like to request the members of the task force to plan promotion of agriculture in Pakistan to attain self-sufficiency in food production, which should be our foremost task.
DR M. JALALUDDIN
Department of Agriculture
University of Karachi
IT is not as worrying to see Taliban running free in Pakistan as seeing our government and intelligence agencies running around confused without being able to figure out who are financing Taliban. Every Pakistani even with half a mind knows that India with its 14 consulates on the Pakistan-Afghanistan is financing the Taliban.
Now we can just hope that the government and media promote these facts to the international community and pressure India to stop financing Taliban.
SHAHRYAR KHAN BASEER
Peshawar
THESE disabled men, women and children may be expecting Islamabad’s medical aid, artificial limbs. Let us do it.
It should be cost-free like the Indian government is doing in Afghanistan after it set up a big workshop in Kabul for the purpose about five years ago, for known reasons.
Z.A. KAZMI
Karachi
THIS is apropos of Aamna Tabish’s letter, ‘CPLC needs help’ (Oct 16). First, we regret if any inconvenience was caused to the writer and would then like to state that Chinese-made mobiles available in the market do not meet the international standards and have IMEI Nos series which have not been adopted by original manufacturers. These sets are counterfeit and have different names against the original branded mobile phones having similar International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers.
We would like to state that Citizens Police Liaison Committee has been assisting all victims of crime for the past over 19 years and has never reversed, in whatsoever manner, from its mandate.
It is due to the concerted efforts of the CPLC that some heinous crimes like kidnapping for ransom has now been under control. The rate of street crimes has come down drastically since the CPLC took the initiative and started blocking of stolen/snatched cellular phones with the assistance of the PTA and mobile phone companies. Thousands of lost cellular phones have been handed over to the owners by the CPLC.
Through these columns we would request Aamna Tabish to visit our office or call the undersigned on phone No. 5683333 during office hours and discuss the matter further for redressal of her complaint.
We hope that the above explanation will answer all the queries regarding Chinese mobile complaints.
SHARFUDDIN MEMON
Chief of CPLC
Karachi
THE world has been pushed to the precipice of another global financial disaster after the great depression of 1929. The crisis has raised a fundamental question: is the era of market capitalism over and are we going back to the Keynesian capitalism in which the state was at the centre of development?
The US government offering a bailout plan to rescue the Wall Street bankers and Britain’s action of buying 60 per cent and 40 per cent share in the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds TSB by injecting the liquidity to the tune of 20 and 17 billion pounds, respectively, subscribe to the view that the state is back and this move by some political economists is considered to be partial ‘nationalisation’ and burial of Thatcherism and neo-liberalism.
Neo-liberalism was basically ultra minoritarian ghetto before the debt crisis of the 80s. Starting from an embryo at the University of Chicago with the philosopher economist Friedrich von Hayek and his students like Milton Friedman at its nucleus, the neo liberals and their funders have created a huge international network of foundations, institutes, research centres, publications, scholars, writers and public relations hacks to develop, package and push their ideas and doctrine relentlessly.
Now, it is a dominant ideology, based on market economy and serving as the main pillar of the capitalist economic globalisation.
However, there are many conspiracy theories which allege that the current crisis has been manufactured by neocons in an attempt to reassert US ascendancy in world politics and economy in the new century. In this regard, they first attacked Iraq on the pretext that it possessed WMDs, though the aim was to occupy Iraq, control its oil reserves and tame Iran through ‘Rambo’ tactics.
However, the neocons failed in their first adventure. The war in Iraq has cost US heavily and, according to Noble laureate Prof Stigliz, it is a $3tr war which is having a devastating effect on the US economy.
Economist and critic F. William Engdahl says that to shape the future of global banking through creative destruction, panic was incited by a well designed long term strategy to change the face of European banking; weaken it with toxic junk, the asset-backed securities; force enough of it into liquidation or cheap enough to buy at fire-sale valuations.
The idea being to create colossal global financial giants, then use their muscle to ravage European banks, advance their global agenda over the coming years and dominate world finance and increase US hegemony in the new century.
That’s the scheme, and Engdahl calls it “a fight for the survival of the American Century”. Built on ‘the twin pillars of American financial (and military) dominance,’ the game is far from over. “Battle lines are drawn.” EU nations have their own ideas. Stabilisation and recovery plans as well that differ from Washington’s and look much sounder. It remains to be seen where things are headed and whether competing nations can work together and do it effectively. They haven’t much time.
It should be noted that the financial crisis trigged by the oil crisis of 1973 and debt crisis of the 1980s were also well managed and manipulated by the US to reassert its dominant role in the global economy through the IMF’s structural adjustment programmes.
These programmes forced the developing countries to devalue their currencies, open their economies to outside world, privatise public assets, lay off workers under the downsizing scheme, cut development expenditure and withdraw subsidies from the food item and essential utilities like water, gas and electrify. SAPs have affected the poor the most.
Whatever the outcome of this financial crisis, its human dimension must be taken into account. Whatever the G 7 countries have done so far have bailed out the Wall Street industrial capitalism, not the poor working class who are in need of help on the part of the rich.
Keeping in view the anarchic and exploitative nature of capitalist market economy, it is good to replace the current international financial system with a better one, respecting people, not capital, and reinstating the role of the state regulating market so that it should not hurt the welfare of the marginalised sections of society around the world.
MANZOOR ALI ISRAN,
SZABIST,
Karachi
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