Graduation condition for elections

IN examining the controversial precondition of graduation for contesting the forthcoming elections two fundamental facts must be remembered. Being a graduate does not in any way certify an individual to be competent enough to deliver or that he shall not indulge in dishonest practices. The other gospel truth is that it has been the ‘educated class’ that has historically inflicted most of the injuries upon our nation.

Having said that, there can hardly be a difference of opinion that the Quaid’s priorities, had he continued to live for a few more years after creating Pakistan, would have been widely different from those pursued by the country’s leadership following him. His efforts in enhancing literacy in the new state would, surely, have been as profound as his commitment to the cause of a dynamic ‘modern democratic state with sovereignty resting in people’.

Democracy, we must be clear, is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people. It’s in-built mechanism that, slowly but definitely, weeds out the scum, is the greatest restraint against self-indulgence at the state’s expense. In the not too distant past, some key political leaders who presided over the country’s destiny, with all their western education and tremendous advantages only proved to be a sheer disappointment. On the other hand, a few in the ranks of mainstream political parties with little or no educational intellect save sincerity of purpose, outshone their leaders in certain national matters involving sagacity.

While democracy must have its organization and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty and the ills of democracy can only be cured by more democracy. But a true democracy was never allowed to prosper in Pakistan. Even today if a bona fide democracy were established, such requirements a few years from now, would become superfluous.

With only a fraction of the GDP allocated to education in the past 54 years and population concentration in the rural areas, many without even middle class schools, nothing could be farther removed from reality than the graduate condition. What is more, with overall literacy at 36 percent and graduates in the abysmal range of 4-5 percent such a prerequisite is hard to understand.

Sectarian and religious extremism, horrendous crimes against the weaker gender and inhumane practices like honour killings that continue unabated in parts of our country are all the consequence of years of neglect and low priority accorded to education. Proliferating literacy besides being a stepping-stone for progress is a promise for strong and dependable institutions. By widening education we in fact help the people become aware of their legitimate rights and this is hence a sovereign remedy for many social evils. But given the ground reality, should a small segment be allowed to ride over the destiny of majority? The question needs national debate.

In the concluding analysis no matter how slow, it’s only the process of ‘unadulterated democracy’ along with profound investment in education that will facilitate cleansing of political stables leading to good governance. Setting educational conditions for contestants without first ensuring these two vital elements would only be an exercise in futility.

MUHAMMAD AZAM KHAN

Commander (Retd)

Lahore Cantt

Basant celebrations

OF late, the festival of Basant has assumed a great importance at local and national levels in both private and official circles. This festival marks the start of the spring season and departure of winter.

In the olden days, this festival used to be celebrated during day time only. But with the advancement of technology and availability of powerful searchlights, it is now being celebrated in the night preceding Basant day, with lavish arrangements of food, music and dance. Now billions of rupees are spent for the preparations, arrangements and in actual flying of kites.

This year has excelled all the previous years as many roof- tops were booked well in advance and elaborate arrangements to invite the senior government officials were made. Some VIPs of the government came to Lahore specially to participate in the Basant night. For their entertainment, people from Showbiz were made available beside catering from 5-star hotels.

Even at government level heavy expenditure was incurred. It is always good to provide occasions for the people at large to give vent to their feelings. But this year, celebration of any kind was not appropriate. Our troops are on the borders, neighbouring country Afghanistan is in a shambles and millions of Afghans are starving because of drought, two decades of war and recent USA coalition indiscriminate carpet bombing there. In this scenario, we have wasted billions of rupees to celebrate Basant and on the entertainment of our local and foreign guests.

This money could have gone to rehabilitate the poor Afghan brethren or even on our own development projects. I don’t think India from where the Basant festival originated, celebrated it in such a big way as we did. Let us confine ourselves in celebrating our own festivals like Eid and Independence days only. Even Jashn-e-Baharan could have been cancelled this year because of the situation on the borders and other related crises that our country is facing.

MOHAMMAD AZHAR KHWAJA

Lahore

Community police officers

THIS is with reference to the news item “Community police officers to be appointed” (Feb 13).

Community policing is a proactive way of policing in which police (with decentralized command structure) and the community participants, sit together and put in efforts to identify, analyse and solve the problems confronted by the people. Community policing is both a philosophy and, practical strategy. It aims at reducing crime and fostering community development.

Criminology is a new branch of social science. It is “a scientific study of crime, criminals and causation of criminality”. It is really unfortunate that this discipline has been unable to get its proper role in our country.

Why not give an opportunity to criminologists to help solve the community problems in a comprehensive way? Why not rely on qualified people who can work as a human bridge between police and the people?

Traditional policing is not equipped to deal with the complex problems faced by the community. On the other hand, community policing serves the purpose as it provides extraordinary motivation and professional skills. Gujranwala Police Community Centre and Paritabad Community Centre, Hyderabad, are successful community policing models.

N. B. NAREJO

Hyderabad

India’s ridiculous charge

ACCORDING to India’s Central Bureau of Investigations, Altaf Ansari, the chief suspect in Kolkata firing at the American Centre, is an Indian citizen, based at Dubai. He himself claimed credit for the incident through his long-distance call, immediately after its occurrence. And now he has reached India through the courtesy of UAE.

Ansari, the above suspect, is alleged to have sent a consignment of weapons and explosives “across-the-border from Pakistan into India’s Gujarat state last year.” CBI cites the transaction as evidence.

The details of the “consignment” may interest some sharp-minded readers. It comprises: two AK rifles; sixteen magazines and some RDX explosives.

The above quantity of arms is the common holding of many individuals in some parts of our country. The Indian media has termed it as a consignment of weapons and explosives just to sensationalize it through the channel of terrorism - a favourite playfield of the Indian government.

India’s next page of this episode will probably say that the consignment of the weapons and ammunition (two AK rifles) is a consignment of terrorism exported to the Indian state of Gujrat by Pakistan last year; and then on its heels will come the indictment against Pakistan for exporting “terrorism across the borders”. India will keep on insisting on this coinage till the cows come home.

A. Q. ANJUM

Rawalpindi

PTCL working: some suggestions

THIS is with reference to a letter from GM Public Relations, PTCL. I do agree that the PTCL has improved a lot in the last few years. It has developed an advanced infrastructure and is providing several modern services to its clients.

But, unfortunately, the dominating factor in all the measures taken by the PTCL is the generation of additional revenues. And that is why the PTCL has often contributed negatively to the development of communication infrastructure in this country. But it should be remembered that it is very difficult to hold back technology.

The case in point is Internet telephony. The PTCL has persistently tried to curb this technology although it could have used it as revenue generator.

A similar attitude is evident in PTCL’s tariff for various services. A local 2mb leased line between Karachi and Lahore costs a corporate body over Rs 1 million per month. On top of that, one is not allowed to use the leased line for internal voice services because the PTCL fears a loss of revenue. This is not development of the sector, nor is it any kind of contribution to the sector.

Another stumbling block on the road to progress is the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to which one has to turn for every service related to telecommunication. The need for regulation is important but it should not become a barrier to advancement. The role of telecommunications in the progress of the country must be understood and this sector should be allowed to grow on its own.

What the PTCL lacks is dynamic leadership. It has also to invest in human resources. The management of the PTCL needs to create an environment where it attracts the best talent of our country, which we continue to lose to companies like AT&T, MCI, CISCO, IBM and many others.

HASAN KHAN

Fremont, USA

Valentine’s Day

WE have a rapidly developing pseudo-western urban class among us, commonly known as the ‘burger class’, which is blindly imitating the west. Valentine’s Day is a crude example of this blunt following of western culture. Urban traders, FM radio stations and a part of the print media have been trying to create Valentine’s Day fever in our cities, to serve their own commercial interests.

I wonder how much these V-day enthusiasts know about our own saints and love legends. If we are so eager to celebrate a lovers’ day, why not have a Heer Ranjha, Sassi Punnon or Umer Marvi day?

TANVEER ARIF

Karachi

Training of midwives

THE government has recently announced plans to train midwives to help reduce maternal mortality and morbidity. The recognition of the need to promote properly trained midwives is commendable and long over due. To have an impact, however, midwives with competency based skills are required.

Most of the present training programmes of midwives are highly inadequate, lacking hands-on training and supervision. There is a near total absence of qualified teachers of midwifery in Pakistan. One of the first steps should be to train competent teachers through a post basic intensive programme leading to a B.Sc in Midwifery.

SADIQUA JAFAREY

President, National Committee on Maternal Health,

Karachi

Halwa from heaven

A VERY beautiful article written by Irfan Hussain (Feb 16). He in his article states what most of us would admit:

“Businessmen owe much of their wealth to the porous nature of the system that has allowed them to evade taxes, under-invoice their products while exporting them and over-invoice their imports”.

With all humility at my command, may I submit that products are over-invoiced while exporting them to gain more rebate and under-invoiced while importing them, to save import duty - and not vice verse as Irfan Hussain has put it.

ABDUL SALAM DADABHOY

Karachi

Purchasing a mobile phone

SINCE the use of mobile phones in the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl, our police are considering measures like the collection of a more detailed personal data as also the declaration of the purpose for which the purchase was being made, for authenticating the sale of a mobile phone.

The logic of our police for making the sale of mobile phones so difficult can best be termed as naive. If this logic is followed further, the sale of anything that might be used as a weapon could be made difficult.

Next time, anyone who goes to buy nails will have to provide his full data and then wait for the approval of the competent authority. The same would be true for kitchen knives, ropes, bricks and many other things under the blue sky.

Rather than complicating the lives of the citizens, our police should have better things to do. Saying goodbye to bribes, can be a good starter!

SULAIMAN S. LALANI

Karachi

Evening study programmes

THIS is with reference to a letter on this subject from Mr Arif (Feb 15).

This problem might be solved if our educational institutions offered weekend programmes on Saturdays and Sundays or distant learning programmes on the internet. We should use advance communication technology for some constructive work instead of chatting with friends and wasting time and money.

I am in the US right now and there are a lot of universities offering distance learning courses which one can take up on the internet. It is only during the last semester when one has to attend college in person, but that too is also over the weekend.

I wish one day we have that system in our country too.

FAWAD SHAIKH

New York,

US

BBC or IBC?

FOR the last two days, BBC is covering President Musharraf’s visit but seeking comments from Indian experts, which are obviously negative and derisory. The television network has dedicated many hours of transmission time to telecast Indian programmes like Question Time India etc usually full of bias and chauvinism.

To top it all, they are showing an Indian documentary called Commandos’ - a jingoistic film about the Indian Army’s elite formation (it has already been shown five or six times and its trailer is exhibited very frequently).

The preponderance of Indian origin newscasters, reporters and experts is a pointer that BBC has been acquired by the Indians like the Star TV. It is about time that BBC changed its title to IBC.

H.N. AKHTAR

Karachi

Mobile phones in Thatta

THE Pakistan Telecommunication Corporation and the mobile telephone companies have failed to keep up their promise of extending mobile phone service to Thatta.

It is ironical that mobile phones work in Karachi and Hyderabad and other major cities of Sindh but Thatta has been ignored. Visitors and tourists from outside feel embarrassed when they can not use their mobiles in Thatta. The locals also suffer bacause of this.

I urge the inclusion of Thatta in the network of mobile phones system.

DR MUMTAZ AHMED UQAILI

Thatta

For record sake

APROPOS of the article “The unfulfilled fantasy,” (Dawn Images, 17 Feb), for the record may I correct A. Khan.

Firsts, I clearly asked Sehyr Saigol to accept the award for Libas - incidentally her name was not on the card and I was not aware that I was supposed to be a presenter until my name was announced.

Secondly, Faiza Samee and Bunto Kazmi won the award jointly in the bridal wear NOT the women’s wear category which was awarded to Rizwan Beyg.

Finally, “A. Khan” should have the courage of his/her conviction not to hide behind a pseudonym. Reporting on the Lux Style Awards is hardly a life threatening proposition!

SAMINA IBRAHIM

Karachi

Offers for dialogue

LET us stop begging for dialogues at any level, at any place, at any time and of any kind, to get the Kashmir issue resolved. Our offers have been spurned time and again.

M. ANWAR KHAN

Sialkot

Marketing ethics

PAKISTAN’s industry is small with an even smaller percentage participating in mass media marketing. Perhaps, because of this small size most of us don’t pay much attention to unethical and eve