Shaukat Aziz was born in Karachi. He went to a fine school here, St Patrick's High School (as did President Pervez Musharraf) and was perhaps taught by good old Father Petronius.

He then studied at Karachi's Institute of Business Administration under the tutelage of Professor Adi Spencer. Then some thirty years of his life, until he returned to take up the dicey practice of Pakistani politics, was spent as a banker, rising successfully in the City Bank amongst other reasonable and talented men working away from home.

Fortune has favoured him. He is now the prime minister-in- waiting - or, as some term him, prime minister-in-line (both unique titles) of this over-populated country, home to some 160 million people, the majority unenlightened, immoderate, illiterate and bigoted. Can he succeed? If his luck holds and surpasses that of the nation, he may.

In an effort to integrate, he has shed his well-cut suits and has taken to wearing the politically correct waistcoat-shalwar- kurta combination, the uniform of the political leadership of this country. He would do better to emulate our president general, and stick to the clothes he has worn all his professional life. Clothes maketh the man the old saying goes. The shalwar-kurta-waistcoat combo has never 'made' any of our politically oriented men.

How will Shaukat cope with the current trends? According to the press yesterday : "MMA bars government employees from attending music parties." The NWFP MMA government issued a notification on June 28 barring government servants from attending functions and meetings at which "Islamic moral values are not regarded or which are in violation of such values, like functions of music and dancing by women." Are they permitted to attend functions where men dance? This notification is reportedly the latest in a "series of steps the MMA has taken to fight what it calls 'immoral activities'."

Another press report tells us that the interior minister, Faisal Saleh Hayat, has announced his intention to bring in a law against honour killing. Now, how does one do that? In the space of six years 4,001 humans have been murdered in the name of 'honour', 2,774 women and 1,327 men. The figures are taken from cases registered under the PPC. What will the new law lay down? 'Thou shalt not honour kill?' This is nonsense. The terminologies 'honour killing' and 'karo-kari' should simply be expunged from the Pakistani legal and other lexicons; they should cease to exist. There is no honour in murder. Murderers who shelter under the word 'honour' must be treated as plain and simple murderers and dealt with under the competent and adequate laws in the PPC that cover murder.

How will the prime minister-to-be deal with Pakistan's standing in the world as regards human development, importantly in the education field? We do not shine, not even twinkle.

In the year 2001, the Shanghai Jiao Tong University decided to establish an academic ranking of universities of the world by evaluating their academic or research performance. A team of four set to work and in 2003 came up with their 'Academic Ranking of World Universities - 2003 (it can be found at http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ rank/methodology.htm).

Students, faculties, institutions, governments and so forth, even the public in general, have an interest in university rankings for various purposes. It is difficult to measure quality and reputation by mere numbers, and it is impossible to quantitatively evaluate universities on a world-wide basis. So the SJTU decided to use several indicators of academic and research performance, including Nobel laureates, highly cited researchers, articles published in universally renowned publications and academic performance per faculty.

A score of 100 is assigned to the highest scoring institution - the rest are calculated as a percentage of the lucky top dog. To no one's surprise, Harvard University is number one on the list.

Of the top ten, the US has eight and the UK two. In the top 100 the US has 57, the UK nine, Japan and Germany five each, Canada has four, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden three each, France has two, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Israel, Italy and Norway each have one.

Moving on to the listing of the next 400 top universities of this world - we find that the Islamic Ummah is represented but twice, by the University of Hacettepe and Istanbul University, both in Turkey, which occupy the 453rd and 483rd spots respectively. Our good friend and neighbour, India, comes in at 255, 455 and 456 with the Indian Institute of Science, the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, and the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur.

China itself is well represented on this lower listing, with eight universities from mainland China (SJTU ranking 414th), five universities from tiny Hong Kong, and four from Taiwan. Not bad going, taking into consideration the tumultuous years of the 20th century and Mao and his little Red Book.

The United Nations Development Fund Human Development Index ranks Pakistan under the heading 'Low Human Development' at 144 in the world, out of a total of 175 countries, sandwiched between Nepal and Zimbabwe. We are dropping at an alarming rate; in 2001 we ranked at 127 under the heading 'Medium Human Development', ironically the position now occupied by India.

According to the UNDP 'Human Development Indicators', the adult literacy rate in 2001 (the latest figure the UNDP has) was said to be 44 per cent with an education index of 0.41. The total population in 2001 was 146.4 million with an annual growth rate of 2.8 per cent which puts us now at over 150 million.

By the year 2015 we will have 204.5 million with a projected annual growth rate of 2.4 per cent. A seemingly hopeless situation, what with some three per cent of our budget going towards education, far less towards population control, and most probably some half of what is allocated to both is eaten up by the usual corruption at all levels.

Shaukat Aziz has filed his papers to contest one bye-election in NA-229 Tharparkar-1 and the other in NA-59 Attock. Tharparkar is famed as being the god-forsaken place to which, in the far-off 1950s our once Sindh chief minister, Mohammad Ayub Khuhro, banished good old Mir Ghulam Ali Talpur to get him out of the way for election purposes. Talpur was put on the back of a camel and sent out into the desert.

Our present chief minister, Arbab Rahim, would do well to not only consider but to appoint Hamida of the PML, daughter of tough old Khuhro, as the Sindh minister of education. She would be the best choice in all ways - she is educated in the true sense of the word and - it goes without saying, she will not rob.