Training for mediapersons

PRESIDENT Pervez Musharraf’s suggestion for the establishment of a media university for the training of media personnel merits a positive — though conditional — response. Any objective observer of the media scene in Pakistan would testify to the acute dearth of high quality training facilities for mass communications professionals. For a long time the press and the electronic media have had to make do with raw hands who had to be trained on the job. Even the products of the journalism departments of various universities did not always come up to standard. Needless to say, the education provided by these departments was not adequate, especially in terms of practical training since they did not have facilities such as printing presses or studios. Given the control exercised by the government on the media in the days of yore — not many newspapers/journals managed to get a declaration, and TV and radio were officially owned — the inadequacy of training facilities was not so acutely felt.

Not so today. The media now stands transformed. Newspapers and the electronic media now enjoy considerable freedom of expression. Besides, there has been a boom of newspapers and magazines. Privately-owned radio and TV channels have been allowed and they have mushroomed in recent years. Naturally the paucity of trained personnel is being increasingly felt. The problem with the media is that unlike the doctors who bury their mistakes, or the lawyers who hang them, the media splash their blunders on the front pages of the newspapers, or beam them across the television screen at prime time. It is time to minimise these bloomers, and for this an institution of excellence — it does not necessarily have to be a university — needs to be set up to impart professional skills and create the needed pool of talent from which the papers and TV channels can draw their need for trained professionals. Considering the sensitivities involved — the public sector education policy has too many sacred cows — it would be advisable for likeminded liberal newspapers, television channels and radio stations to join hands and collectively set up such a media university/institution. That would be the only way of ensuring that those graduating from this institution are not turned into glorified public relations officers for the government.

While attending the presentation by the new minister of information on which occasion he suggested the establishment of a media university, President Musharraf also said that the media should project a soft image of Pakistan for which he emphasised the need for “timely and accurate information”. The soft image issue has been widely debated and the consensus is that no professional mediaperson worth his/her salt would try to gloss over the realities of life to paint a rosy picture of a government or a country. Truth and objectivity demand that the positive and negative points of any situation or policy are pointed out accurately so that there is no contradiction between “reality and perception”. If the image that emerges in the process is not a “soft” one, the mediaperson should not be blamed. To facilitate his work, it is also important that there is free flow of information that in any case should be recognised as the right of every citizen. The information minister has promised a series of regular interaction between the media and the federal ministries. One would not quarrel with that but it is more important that full information is provided to journalists as a matter of course and not as a favour expecting reciprocity.

Killing of picnickers

WHEN Israel kills Palestinian civilians in cold blood, western governments and media do not consider it an act of terrorism. In fact, either there is no reaction to the murder of Palestinian civilians at all or the murders are “regretted” at best. It is only when a Palestinian suicide bomber blows himself up that it is called a terrorist act. On Friday, Israel killed seven Palestinians having a picnic at the seaside in the Gaza Strip. The dead picnickers included three children. Counting in the seven killed a day earlier in an Israeli air raid takes the death toll in 24 hours to 14. However, Israel did not seem much concerned over the murders, for its spokesman denied that it was naval gunfire that killed the Palestinians, and said fire could have come from the artillery. Another explanation given by an Israeli military spokesman was that it could have been an accident in which “an artillery shell went off course”. Worse still, he seemed to blame the picnickers by saying that “perhaps an explosive device was ... tinkered with”. Does it really matter whether it was Israeli gunboats that slaughtered the picnickers or the artillery? In their infinite mercy, however, the Israelis have regretted the incident and promised an inquiry.

Reactions from western capitals had not been available at this writing, but Russia has called the killings unacceptable, and a UN spokesman said that Secretary-General Kofi Annan was disturbed by the murders and has called for a full investigation. The most unfortunate aspect of the murders was the end of the 16-month old truce which Hamas had unilaterally abided by, for it retaliated by firing rockets into Israel. Next time, a Hamas spokesman said, “the rockets will be longer in range and they will hit places deeper inside the Zionist entity.” He said Friday’s crime had changed “the rules of the game” and that suicide attacks could be resumed. There is no doubt that the suicide bombings will be condemned by the western capitals and media, but will they bother to investigate who sabotaged the truce by a dastardly act of terrorism against Palestinian civilians?

Human distress in Thar

A RECENT seminar on the prevailing drought conditions in Sindh’s Tharparkar district has focused attention on the misery of the million-plus inhabitants living in one of the country’s most arid and poverty-stricken zones. Last year’s inadequate rainfall, coupled with uncertain prospects in the coming monsoon season, is causing people and livestock to migrate to the barrage areas. The current situation evokes memories of three years ago when the Thar region, along with other parts of the country, was in the grip of a severe drought that dealt a serious blow to crops and livestock and created hardships for the people. Thousands of them had to move to irrigated areas and larger towns with their families.

Since prolonged periods of drought are not an unusual occurrence in the interior of Sindh, there is all the more reason to take long-term measures that would make living conditions more bearable for people and livestock in the drought-ridden regions. This would mean assessing current water harvesting and conservation practices and identifying and correcting their deficiencies. Besides, there are many projects relating to the development of water reservoirs that have virtually been abandoned. These need to be revived and implemented so that people’s lives and livelihoods are not disrupted by forced migration. At another level, the misuse of government funds meant for drought relief calls for investigation. It is distressing to note that a part of the funds meant for the Drought Emergency Relief Assistance project is said to have been spent on luxury cars used by relatives of the officer running the programme. Such corrupt practices simply cannot be condoned and more serious efforts must be made to provide means of livelihood for people in the drought-stricken areas, especially Thar.

The fundamentalist challenge

THE so-called war on terror has confused the real fundamentalist challenge. It faces secularists and democrats at every step in daily life and not merely in the remote fastness of Waziristan or the border regions of Afghanistan or indeed even in the shape of the MMA. It is a challenge that most of us have failed to recognise or counter.

A kind of hypocritical piety has come to dominate our lives that goes unnoticed and may have a far more invidious effect than the activity of the militants and radicals, who are at least identifiable. The religious parties are using Islam for political purposes. That is straightforward enough: they too are identifiable. But there is also a lot of not-so-obvious false religiosity that is reflected in all ministers and political leaders referring to religion at some point or the other in their speeches to justify their policies or actions or sanctimoniously invoking God’s name before starting on another peroration that is full of what they know to be false declarations and assertions. Every TV channel now seems to be in a race to outdo the other in presenting what are considered to be Islamic programmes.

Even the minister of state for finance in his budget speech this week could not resist the temptation to declare that Pakistan would serve as a model for other Islamic countries. Ziaul Haq, amidst his flurry of measures designed to make the country Islamic, had claimed that the eyes of the entire Muslim world were on Pakistan to see how it implemented religious injunctions as state policy. The eyes of the world were then, as now, turned on Pakistani illegal immigrants and, currently, on those suspected of militant tendencies — we continue to live in a world of delusion.

There is also the practice that has lately become popular of saying “Allah Hafiz” instead of “Khuda Hafiz” — a practice that has been unthinkingly adopted by so many of us. That is why “invidious” is such a good word to employ to describe what is happening around us. There is obviously nothing wrong with “Allah Hafiz”, but why play with words and change something that has long been accepted? (The Arabs, incidentally, either simply say “Salam” or “Fi-amanAllah”).

Or there is this obsession with repeated umras by the well-to-do, with the lead provided by the nation’s leaders, or the “dars” sessions held by ladies who otherwise think nothing of splurging money on imported cosmetics, and both seem to have become a fashion with the well-to-do middle classes.

When huge gatherings are organised by religious and proselytising parties and groups and innocent and gullible people persuaded to attend, there is no concern for public safety in these volatile times. No one dares ask why busy roads are closed for prayers or religious gatherings. Our entire value system is in peril of falling a prey to unmitigated hypocrisy, to religion for show. If Islam has ever been in danger, it is from this ‘munafiqat’, hypocrisy, and the ‘munafiqs’ it has produced. They have made religion sound like a burden rather than as something that makes life fulfilling.

This threat is being met neither by our political parties nor by those who are described as “liberals”. Even Muslim jurists have declared the Hudood laws to be non-Islamic and oppressive. Yet no political party seriously campaigns against them. Asked on Tuesday to comment on the demand for the laws’ repeal, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz could only feebly say that it was a “sensitive issue” and would be discussed in parliament. Most liberals confuse liberalism with a free-wheeling lifestyle. They don’t bother as long as they can continue to enjoy their comforts and their evening social rounds.

Liberalism is not freedom to eat or drink what you like or the freedom to live as you want to: it is a state of mind which should feel agitated at any retreat before fundamentalism. Many liberals are unabashedly pro-establishment and utterly conservative in their political attitudes, conservatism in our context means “compromise” as long as our vested interests are not jeopardised. So you have this phenomenon of this absolutely liberated head of a multinational company nursing a drink in his hand and rubbishing politicians and declaring that at least in a military dispensation, he doesn’t get so many “sifarishaat”, recommendations, for jobs (although even that has been proven wrong).

Otherwise perfectly secular businessmen and business executives feel quite comfortable with both mullahs and military regimes as long as their businesses continue to flourish through budgets described as “people friendly” but which actually entrench the elite further.

If at this point a mixing up is detected between democracy and resisting fundamentalism or adhering to secularism, it is only because one cannot be separated from the other. Secularism is inherent in, and an essential component of, democracy. No serious debate has ever taken place on separating religion from governance. Much damage had been inflicted on the communal fabric when the Quaid-i-Azam rose to speak in the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947. Yet, as a confirmed secularist, he had the courage to declare that religion had nothing to do with the business of the state. Do we have a secularist leader like this in our midst?

The Indian diplomat and politician, Mani Shankar Aiyer, in his excellent book Confessions of a Secular Fundamentalist quotes from Professor Rasheeduddin Khan’s work Bewildered India. The professor says that Pakistan’s decision to emphasise religion as the determinant operative principle of its nation-building led not only to the alienation of the non-Muslim population, but “even in the life of the majority it projected a conflict of loyalties of identity, between demands of modernised social change and adherence to a given dogma”. This conflict continues to cloud our thinking.

It is important, however, to make a distinction with regard to some recent, post-9/11 developments that are also sometimes taken to indicate a retreat into fundamentalism. Many Muslim women in the West and in Pakistan have taken to wearing the veil or scarf and many Muslim men have begun to look more like practising Muslims. For many of them this is not a going back to fundamentalism, but an assertion of their cultural, religious and political identity that they believe to be under threat. This is particularly true of young Muslim youth in the West who otherwise live in a secular environment and are secular in their thinking.

If this is a mark of political revolt against the persecution and profiling of Muslims by western governments, most notably by the Bush administration, then it has to be looked at with some respect. It should be remembered that many Palestinian women wear the veil but have been totally a part of the secular, anti-imperialist Palestinian movement. They are far more liberated than so many of our ‘begums’ and even NGO activists who sigh and exclaim, “Oh, these mullahs”.

So this retreat into a more traditional mode of dress or conduct on the part of those who do so politically ought to be considered separately from the other manifestations of fundamentalism that appear to be ritualistic and without substance. The latter should be guarded against and all those who care for a rational, democratic and pluralistic Pakistan ought to refuse to fall into easy acquiescence of the agenda being set for us by misguided zealots.

Our ostensibly secular parties like the People’s Party and the PML-N (though its leader had once nursed ambitions of becoming an Amirul Momineen) should be specially forthcoming on this account in this election year, with the religious parties in full cry and the militarists looking for ways to hang on.

Planet football

MORE than a billion people are said to have watched the 2002 football World Cup final — an audience no other event can rival. Countries from every inhabited continent are playing in 2006 contest in Germany and there is intense interest in every nation on earth. Why is it that this spectacle is able to grip the planet in the way it does?

Technology and the shrinking of the globe are part of the answer. In the early days of international football, communication, transport and war frustrated the contest. In 1930 the time and cost of getting to Uruguay for the first tournament was enough to put off all but four European teams. Only Brazil made the reverse Atlantic crossing for both the next two finals. Few fans — even of teams which did take part in early tournaments — could watch the action since TV cameras were not present until 1954.

Strained international relations were another problem. England pulled out of Fifa in 1920, not least because competing with countries who it had so recently fought was felt distasteful. It then missed the chance to compete right through to 1950 as the second world war meant that there was no tournament at all during the 1940s.

Today the Olympics are its only potential rival for global reach. But a string of games leading up to a single final give the World Cup a focus that the Olympics lack. While the most powerful teams are still concentrated in Europe and Latin America, Fifa rules ensure that all parts of the globe are present at the finals.

—The Guardian, London