Time adjustment

WE have been through this exercise before. During Ms Benazir Bhutto’s tenure, the authorities concerned contemplated adjusting the clock in just the opposite direction. Thank Heavens, the blunder was noticed in time to prevent us from becoming a laughing stock in the world. The experiment was thus quietly shelved.

Now, somebody rather eager to take the credit for importing the concept is at it again. Hopefully, he/she will get it right this time around. But the comedy is that this change is not even required for our kind of geographic location. Pakistan being close to the Equator gets abundance of sunlight to warrant any adjustment of the clock for summers and winters. The logic of daylight saving is generally adopted by the western countries situated at higher latitudes.

In our attempt to blindly ape the west, we will only be confusing the people. If it were a one-time adjustment, we could survive the confusion, but this is going to be a chaos on a six-monthly basis, and that, too, for nothing.

CLOCKWISE
Karachi

Grievances of smaller provinces

THE dismemberment of Pakistan, mistrust among the provinces and linguistic bias towards different units are due to the follies of our politicians who have wanted to gain their political ends at the expense of national interest.

In retrospect, the One Unit scheme proved to be a wild goose chase which pushed the country towards uncertainty, mistrust and, above all, inter-provincial disharmony. The One Unit plan resulted in the merging of 310,000 square miles into a single province known as West Pakistan, which took its final shape under Chaudhry Muhammad Ali. It heightened the role of the country’s civil-military bureaucracy.

The whirligig of time predicted the failure of One Unit and afterwards, Yahya’s Martial law regime dissolved West Pakistan by an order in March, 1970. But the introduction of four provinces in West Pakistan created the hegemony of Punjab over the rest of West Pakistan and led to the creation of Bangladesh.

After the fall of Dhaka, Punjab’s superiority over the rest of Pakistan increased four-fold and resulted in the birth of nationalistic and linguistic parties in the form of Seraiki Qaumi Movement, Sindhi National Front, Awami National Party and many others.

In short, the National Reconstruction Bureau’s idea of forming more provinces on the basis of the parity of representation at the federal level and the division on the basis of geography and not on the basis of linguistic considerations is the need of the hour and is equally vital in order to redress the grievances of smaller provinces.

DR ALI BURHAN MUSTAFA
Rahimyar Khan

First Indian colour film

THIS is with reference to ‘Private Eye’ by Khalid Hasan (March 4). I would like to correct that Aan was not the first Indian colour film. It was Sohrab Modi’s Jhansi ki Rani which carried this distinction.

Jhansi ki Rani was a film without songs and proved to be a big flop. It made Sohrab Modi bankrupt. He had to sell his studio and motion picture company, Minerva Movietone. The Marwaris of Calcutta had earlier, because of his Pukaar fame, offered him a sum of Rs20 million