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January 12, 2006
PROFILE: Nargis Rahman – For the love of humanity
In spite of Nargis Rahman’s pioneering work in education, she knows that no matter how much money is put into the education sector, the problems will keep on growing because the basics are not right. She explains that she has a radical plan in mind to improve the situation, writes Marylou Andrew
In a beautiful white house, in the bowels of Clifton, Karachi, lives a woman, of boundless courage and vitality; a woman with a force of will so strong that she just might change the world through it.
Meet Nargis Rahman. If you ask anyone about her, they will call her a social worker or a peace activist, or perhaps both. But her work defies such narrow definitions. As founder and convener of the Karachi Women’s Peace Committee (KPWC), she has sought to bring together opposing groups on a singular platform for conflict resolution. As head of the Falah Trust, her work for the uplift of education in katchi abadis has been legendary.
Perhaps the reason that people know so little about Rahman is because she is unwilling to project herself, preferring instead to talk about her work. Born to an Arab father and Indian mother, Rahman’s philanthropic pursuits in later life were a direct result of her love for educating children. She recalls a time when her husband was posted to a desolate corner of the country and she took on teaching at a small village school, an experience which shaped her future work.
Rahman first began doing charity work in Lyari in the late 80s’, digging a well for the people when they needed water and providing financing for their daughters’ marriages. When she realized that their problems were constantly multiplying and the funds for her charity work were in short supply. She was forced to take a closer and harder look at the situation to see what she could do to empower the people of the area.
Working under the banner of her NGO, the Falah Trust, Rahman established a small school enrollment programme. She took 200 children from the community and enrolled them into the government schools in the area. The situation in the schools, as expected, was dismal. The buildings lay in a state of decay and the teachers were uninterested in teaching the students.
Rahman had to fight tooth and nail to keep her students in the schools. However, four years and 1,000 students later, she noticed that the drop-out rate, particularly among young boys, was very high. The reason, she says, was simple. The schools may have been functioning but they were teaching very little and even after four years of education, most of the children did not have a grasp on the alphabets.
Unwilling to give up, Rahman took 17 young women and got them free teacher’s training from the Aga Khan Foundation. She then fought with the bureaucracy to have them installed in the government schools. Rahman is extremely grateful for the help of two KMC officials, who, she explains, had the foresight to understand her vision and eventually helped her get academic control in the government schools.
Little did she know that it was going to be a constant uphill battle. With every change in bureaucracy, Rahman went through the same motions over and over again. Even though the drop-outs returned to the school with the installation of the new teachers, the problems of income generation and teaching basic skills remained. Rahman’s pleas to be allowed to start a vocational skills programme in the school fell upon deaf ears. Eventually, she understood that she could no longer be a foster parent to the schools, and turned them over to the government again.
The communities, she recalls, were alarmed by this move, but she reassured them that the government would take care of their children’s basic needs. She knew that they would have to fight for themselves, but also understood that a hitherto backward people could not be expected to have the vision to allocate resources effectively and know what was good for the children.
“The politicians don’t want institutions because they know that these will make the people strong and eventually give the government very little control over them.”
As expected, corruption prevailed and Rahman’s trained teachers were transferred out of the schools. Even a year long fight with the city government to have them reinstated yielded no results. In 2002, she established community schools with trained teachers, ran them for a year and then handed them over to the communities.
While Rahman was working for the uplift of the Lyari communities, she also had another project up her sleeve; a project which was a direct result of the sectarian strife of 1994-95. Working with Naushaba Burney and others, Rahman founded the Karachi Women’s Peace Committee in order to make opposing groups in the conflict see reason. Not only was the group horrified at the way in which people were being killed (in mosques during prayer) but also that large numbers of young people were participating in the violence.KWPCs first forum invited Shia and Sunni ulema to discuss their problems. Nargis Rahman says that they were surprized to find that they had no major differences of opinion; rather it was the politicians who were playing blame games. After being disheartened by the attitude of the politicians, KWPC held a demonstration and Rahman recalls, with great interest, that the majority of the women involved in it belonged to the so-called upper crust of society. The lower classes, though affected by the violence, were uninterested in solutions as existence was far more important.
Evaluating the situation more than 10 years down the road, Rahman realizes that, in essence, not much has changed since 1995. “Individuals,” she says, “are progressing and doing well for themselves, but no one wants to play a role in national development. The poor are busy in their quest for subsistence, the man on the street has no time for politics, and the rich simply don’t care.”
Having said as much, however, Rahman believes that Pakistanis are extremely politically conscious people, but most have evaluated the situation and realized that they do not register as a collective force. She blames the political leaders for suppressing the voice of the people and for not forming the basic institutions that can make this country great.
“The politicians don’t want institutions because they know that these will make the people strong and eventually give the government very little control over them.”
The problem is about more than just corruption, she explains, it has a lot to do with educated leadership, an area in which Pakistan is sorely lacking. “We’ve had the same politicians for the last 30 years, and most of them have neither the education nor the exposure to realize that we are only as big as our country.”
Discussing the ‘soft’ image that Pakistan is so keen to project to the world, Rahman wonders why Pakistan has such a negative image abroad even though the country has had no major revolution to speak of and Pakistanis, by nature, are not a bloody-minded people. Answering her own question, she comes back to the need for the rule of law in order to protect against crime and corruption and safeguard basic rights such as health and education.
No matter which tangent she goes on, Rahman cannot stray too far away from the need for education. In response to a question about Pakistani curriculums relying too much on rote-based learning and not encouraging independent thought, she replies that we need to get the basics right before we move on to bigger issues. “Yes, the curriculum needs to be overhauled,” she says, “but first we need to focus on training our teachers properly and then giving our children basic education.”
In her quest to provide basic education, not only has Rahman worked in Lyari, she has also set up a school for the children of lower cadre policemen and women in an old thana in Kemari, and she has adopted six schools in Clifton under the banner of the KWPC. As part of the Falah Trust’s work to rehabilitate ex-convicts, she has also helped set up her own school for 125 children in a graveyard.
In spite of her pioneering work in education, Nargis Rahman knows that no matter how much money is put into the education sector, the problems will keep on growing because the basics are not right. She explains that she has a drastic plan in mind to improve the situation. “We need to give existing teachers a golden handshake and be generous about it. They are also victims in this situation because they have no money or options. Nevertheless, they need to go; young people need to be trained and the status and salaries of teachers need to be improved.
On the KWPC front, Rahman feels that change has occurred over the years but is still uncertain about whether the committee itself has been responsible for initiating it. She knows that people have yet to understand the importance of public activism and the need to object and agitate when they know something is wrong. “This is only possible when we become an emancipated and empowered people. When we lay a strong foundation, the rest will grow on it, and we will be all the richer and more fortunate for it.” n
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