The leadership and collective work of geese

THE education community are up in arms against the government’s efforts to reform the higher education sector and restructure the country’s higher educational institutions. Although exact details of the reforms under the Model University Ordinance have yet to be made known, the main features include the introduction of a board of governors (BoG) for every institution and the contract system for university employees.

The uproar by the teaching community against the ordinance has prompted some soul-searching by academicians into the reasons behind the malaise afflicting our public sector educational institutions, and whether the government’s proposed reforms will help eradicate the ills or actually exacerbate them.

Most agree that high up on the list of causes for the malaise is the shortage of funds. Insufficient research infrastructure and facilities available to Pakistan academicians and scientists have undoubtedly stunted their professional capabilities, both in imparting quality education and in doing impactful research.

But much more damaging than the lack of funds, many academicians believe, has been the lack of direction and drive in the administration, both at the institution and at the government level. Unlike in other countries, most if not all of the vice- chancellors in Pakistan’s universities are non-academicians, noted a professor who has been in the higher education teaching profession for twenty-five years.

The result, he laments, is that our universities have not had the kind of leadership necessary for them to develop the academic environment that is conducive to advancing knowledge and promoting innovative research. Instead of turning the institutions that they head into catalysts for discovering, creating and advancing knowledge, our university administrators have achieved the opposite, he adds.

Successful universities abroad are precisely those that are global in their outlook and which are actively engaged in fellow programmes, doctoral student conferences, research symposia and other such activities that stimulate cooperation in teaching and research with other universities, says an associate professor who recently returned from abroad. Universities in Pakistan hardly even cooperate in this manner at the national level.

Many academicians also blame the predicament of the country’s universities on the open violation of the rules of meritocracy and the official patronage of mediocrity. The result is that faculty appointments and student admissions are being done on account of personal contacts, nepotism and political expediency, with many people openly getting admissions and positions which they do not deserve.

In one institution in Islamabad, which is among the several in the country which have been granted university status, faculty positions are being filled without going through the proper process of advertisement and selection. In other institutions, faculty seats are being created for specific people with influence and contacts or on the basis of caste or ethnicity, rather than on the basis of the needs of that institution or society.

This kind of power politics and politicization filters down to the lower level, hampering proper and disciplined functioning of the departments. The following is the story told by one head of department: two faculty members went away on a year’s leave, refusing to surrender the keys of their rooms as they are supposed to according to the rules so that the rooms can be put to proper utilization. The department is already short of rooms for faculty members and doctoral students, but the university administration won’t back any action on it.

In another department of the same institution, a faculty member was found to have favoured a student in admission test marking, as a result of which the student was given admission which she would otherwise not have got. The department head objected to this kind of nepotism but the university administration surprisingly put its full weight behind the faculty member and the student, protecting the two from any consequences.

Many academicians tend to agree that in principle the government’s proposed reforms might increase efficiency. But given the politicized kind of culture and environment that exists in our universities and society in general, the reforms would merely increase the prospects of nepotism rather than enable our universities to overcome their inefficiency and develop into beacons of knowledge and research innovation.

The government’s reforms, they say, do not address the basic problem of politicization in the universities that has been mainly responsible for the deterioration in the standards of teaching and research over the years.

Many believe that reforms are needed, but not the kind of tumultuous structural reforms being proposed under the Model University Ordinance. Pakistan’s existing university structure is similar to that in many other countries, notes one senior academician. The question we should ask ourselves, he says, is why the same kind of system has been successful in other countries but not in Pakistan.

Gen Zia, he recalls, had also tried to change the structure of the country’s universities, just as he changed the structure of the country’s political system. Our universities, he says, do not need such structural changes which, as we have seen, only add to the problems rather than solve them. What the government and the universities need to do, he believes, is to make the existing system work, just as it works in many other countries.

Says yet another professor who has worked in Western and Southeast Asian universities before returning to Pakistan several years ago: what our universities badly need is leadership and teamwork. Quoting the vice-chancellor of a Southeast Asian university, the professor cites the example about geese.

When geese migrate south for the winter they fly in flocks, recounts the professor, each flock in a V-formation. Flying in a V- formation, the entire flock is able to travel almost twice as far than if each goose flew on its own. As each goose flaps its wings, it creates uplift for the goose following behind. Should a goose try to go it alone, it experiences increased drag and resistance. It might even lose its way.

The leading goose right at the front has to work doubly hard to navigate and lead the way. When the leading goose gets tired, leadership is rotated to one of the stronger geese. Geese further back honk to encourage one another to keep up the pace. By flying together in such intelligent arrangements, and rotating leadership among the strong, geese are able to cover vast distances and reach their destination.

What we lack, concludes the professor, is the leadership and the intelligent collective work of the geese in our universities. We have so far failed to harness the complementary strengths of our diverse community to enable us to fly far and soar high, he comments. Instead, every individual is flying on his own, knocking into and falling over each other, and in the process sinking lower and lower.

Strike at textile college over high fees

THE National College of Textile Engineering (NCTE), which has produced a nucleus of bright engineers in the textile sector, is beset by a strike for the last 40 days. Students also boycotted the annual examinations, but government functionaries or members of the All-Pakistan Textile Mills Association, which grabbed the control of the college, are silent spectators.

The college’s merit was at the top throughout Pakistan during the academic year of 1993. The merit limit for admission was 907 marks in FSc. But now it is touching the lowest level for the current academic year. The merit has come down to 660 marks, and only 211 students have applied for admission for the academic year 2002-2003 against 150 seats.

In order to place the college on a sound financial footing, the government enacted the NCTE Cess Act for collection of tax from textile industry at the rate of Re1 per spindle for spinning industries and Rs20 per powerloom for the weaving industries.

However, a visit to the NCTE revealed a sorry state of affairs from every angle. It appears that the institution lacks teachers with leadership qualities, properly equipped laboratories and conviction required for imparting education.

The students are being supplied substandard food in the hostel. The lawns adjacent to the hostel are in a shambles, while the decades-old trees have been uprooted. There are no buses, canteens and amusement facilities for the students. There is also no hall for holding workshops, seminars, competitions and literary contests in the college.

Perhaps, it was one of the few institutions of the country which hosted students from all the provinces, the northern areas and Kashmir. These students brought about an unbelievable revolution in the textile sector and were instrumental in modernizing the spinning, weaving, hosiery, processing and printing sectors, earning handsome foreign exchange.

A painful aspect of the situation is that the enhancement in fees is going on unchecked in the NCTE, while in major departments like spinning, weaving, processing and garments, there is no Ph.D teacher. Majority of the members of the faculties belongs to those fields which are not relevant to the education imparted in this institution. The library has 11,835 books, 90 per cent of which are obsolete. Similarly, laboratory equipment is outdated.

Over 75 per cent students of this college travelled up to 30 kilometres in the city to generate funds for paying their fees. A number of students are reportedly working in powerlooms and other textile units and restaurants at night for generating funds.

A number of students said their parents had sold their assets to pay their fees and other charges. But the continued increase in the fees seemed to have shattered the dreams of their families. Their sisters waiting for marriage were in a shock. Three students said their sisters had committed suicide owing to financial stress.

Majority of the students lack freshness on their faces, their eyes and cheeks giving a look of misery and penury. They are even not able to reply to simple questions with confidence, showing the pressure they are under.

The aberrant increase in the tuition fee and other charges can be judged from the following chart:

A trust deed (dated Dec 25, 1954, article III), which is an agreement of the Board of Trustees who had originally established this college, envisages Award prize, give rewards, stipends and scholarships to the student trainees and research workers in textile technology for work in Pakistan and abroad. According to this rule and statement of the Board of Trustees, tuition fee will not be charged from the students.

The Students Action Committee, which represents the protesting students, claimed that their strike was not comparable to the strike of other institutions because they did not accept the government decision of the appointment of the board of governors. NCTE had already been run by the BoG since 1983, and the students were not against it. The students strike was against the unaffordable college dues which were at present Rs79,220 per annum. The second point of protest was that the college management could not be privatized according to the presidential order which was also correlated with the first point because when the college would become a private university, the management would further increase the fees. The basic protest of students was against the private university status for the college, action committee leaders said.

“The college management started a new department, Garment Manufacturing Technology, in 2000, but it even failed to arrange classrooms and teachers for this purpose. The management had reported to the federal government that four more PhD scholars had joined the college, but the ground reality was otherwise as no new PhD faculty member had joined the college,” they claimed.

The students urged President Pervez Musharraf to send a team for investigation of incidents of violence and negative steps taken by the college administration before making any decision about the status of NCTE. The government should also direct the board of governors to call a meeting of college committee for the revision of the fees schedule up to affordable limits (below Rs20,000) so that the students could end their strike.

As regards the solution to budget problem of the college, the students have suggested that 15 per cent seats be allocated to self-financing like other institutions so that bright students belonging to the middle or poor classes may get textile education.

On the other hand, the NCTE principal claimed that the Aptma management took a number of measures, including hiring of qualified and experienced faculty teachers at a salary package comparable to industry norms, renovation of classrooms, hostels, library, establishment of a computer centre and face-lifting of the institution. The BoGs caused a gradual increase in college dues and simultaneously introduced a scheme of Qarz-i-Hasna for the needy students. A sum of Rs4.9 million had been distributed among the needy students during the last four years. “The students who have passed out and are working in the industry, are not paying back as agreed the loan received out of a sum of Rs4.9 million paid to the needy students. The amount of recovery is about Rs69,000,” he said.

Talking about the current situation, he said the crisis in the college sparked off over a minor issue of sessional marks notified by the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, resulting in boycott of examinations by the second-year class despite our assurances that the papers would be marked in accordance with the university policies. Second-year boycott was followed by the third-year students and the simple matter of sessional marks was changed into a demand for a government university and reduction of fees without formally presenting these demands to college teachers or to the Aptma management. The matter of upgradation of the college is under consideration by the government.

He claimed the peaceful protest and boycott of examinations turned violent, and there was chanting of slogans against the college authorities and Aptma management and forcible closure of college office, library and other development activities in the college.

The principal said we ignored all this considering that better sense would prevail and kept on explaining to them that the college was never a government institution and was being funded by Aptma who had been paying a sum of Rs12 million annually in addition to the cess being paid to the government. Moreover, it was up to the government to make it a private or government university.

He claimed, in fact, some misguided students wanted to keep the issue alive by joining hands with teaches and students of the government colleges who were protesting against government policies. They forced the outgoing class of final year not to appear in the examinations and blocked their entry into the examination hall causing mental torture and financial loss to the students who had to join service immediately after the examinations, he said. According to the students, Aptma has converted NCTE into an earning institution. The policy is to attain a complete hold on the institution and to eliminate government intervention. Aptma is also trying to make it a private university so that it may increase the dues according to its wishes.

FEE 1990 1992 1999 2001 2002

Registration Fee Rs. 250 300 600 600 758

Admission Fee Rs. 350 450 8000 10125 12825

College Security Rs. 800 800 2500 2500 3150

Re-Admission Fee (In case name of the student is struck off)

Rs. 350 450 8000 10125 12825

Verification Fee Rs. 100 200 1500 1500 1913

Students Activity Fund Rs. 250 300 300 350 563

Magazine Subscription Rs. 100 100 200 250 450

Sports & Tournament Fee Rs. 200 200 200 250 450

Medical Fee Rs. 100 200 635 800 1013

Transport Fee Rs. 240 300 1000 1265 1603

Tuition Fee Rs. 2400 2400 14400 28800 40500

Hostel Admission Fee Rs. 100 100 800 1015 1294

Hostel Activities Rs. 100 200 200 250 450

Sui-Gas Charges Rs. 300 400 1600 2025 2588

Electricity Charges Rs. 360 360 2500 3150 3994

Hostel Security

(refundable) Rs. 360 500 1000 1000 1406

Service Charges Rs. 480 600 1520 1920 2430

Room Rent Rs. 840 840 2500 2250 2868

It is not trade with India, but Indian traders that people are wary of

IT was Gen Ershad of Bangladesh, the first host of Saarc summit in 1985, who spilled the beans to me. “Shall I be frank with you?” he asked candidly in a TV interview, part of an Indian government-funded documentary on the South Asian community. “We were all allergic to India, so we decided to come together and especially bring India into it, so that we could all live together equally.”

In other words, this was the real motive for Saarc to come together. It was a politically-motivated decision, not a decision driven by some profit-motive that comes with trade and commerce. Actually the reasons for Saarc to come together were not very different from the factors that had brought countries of Southeast Asia into a group called Asean, a pro-West group ranged against China, a veritable successor to Seato.

A major issue in Asean was that China, the quarry, was kept out of the grouping, while in Saarc, India, the quarry, was hugged closely, a bit in the manner of boxers who grab each other around the waist to dodge a volley of knockout blows. By hugging the rival tightly, the boxer at the receiving end buys time, sometimes a small but crucial reprieve.

Outside Ershad’s modest house in Dhaka, I remember speaking to several men and women. Dhaka sari, hilsa fish, the two national anthems by Tagore that unite India and Bangladesh and so on — lots of similarities, reasons to live as good neighbours were spouted. The problem? “We are exploited by Indian traders. India sees us as a colony,” went the refrain.

There was, in particular, comment on the Marwaris, an enterprising business community from Rajasthan on India’s border with Pakistan who happen to strike fear among their counterparts with what are perceived to be underhand, even ruthless, methods of doing business.

Thus soon after the creation of Bangladesh the Marwaris arrived with their truckloads of assorted goods. “They tried to sell us toothpaste with Made For Bangladesh signs,” recalled one Dhaka resident ruefully. “Apart from the humiliation this implied, it was also a lowly thing to do.”

Dubious business ethics are evenly spread across the entire region and beyond and ordinarily no particular community should be held singularly responsible for the bad odour that wafts in their wake across the entire stretch they straddle.

However, India’s burgeoning black economy, estimated at anything between 40 per cent and 60 per cent of the national economic output, stems largely from these underhand methods, including over- and under-invoicing of traded goods.

There are numerous other shady ways to do business that contribute to our parallel economy and thus to corruption. And this leads us to the next question: If Indian businessmen are not loyal to their own country, how can they be trusted by the neighbours? This argument echoes across much of South Asia. I have also heard it at least as far away as the Gulf.

Go to Nepal, Indians are welcome, Marwaris are dreaded, go to Bhutan, they look at you with suspicion, again because of some unscrupulous Indian businessman who preceded you in the queue from Paro to Thimpu. Of course, the Pakistanis have an ongoing love-hate relationship with the Indian baniya. How many of my cousins from Pakistan love to engage each and every shopkeeper in Delhi in tense haggling, both suspicious of each other, and both in need of each other with a passion.

The business class is believed to form the core of the mass base of the politically influential Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, or at least they did before the party expanded into other areas of Indian society in recent years. Similarly, the Pakistani baniya is, by and large, believed to support the Jamaat-i-Islami. Interestingly, both were opposed to partition and now both are at the forefront of endorsing and vindicating what they once opposed — separate, strong and ideologically motivated nationalism.

However, when the baniya begins to vend pop nationalism and corners the wholesale contract to promote pulp jingoism, any country allowing it to happen does so at its own risk. It is more likely than not to be short-changed in the end.

It is a widely shared fear in India that the baniya or the business community has been given an unduly crucial role in deciding important matters, for example whether New Delhi should allow the Saarc summit to take place in Islamabad or not.

Now the question of MFN status should be resolved. Yes, Pakistan should not be allowed to play truant on this issue. But what good is an MFN status going to do if not a single country among the seven Saarc members can honestly claim to have a free market economy to back them?

This is another crucial respect in which Saarc is different from all the other successful regional groups. It simply does not have the economic structures within its respective national frameworks to support an economic union that India talks about, talks mind you but does little to make it work. Ask Sri Lanka for a more detailed answer to this Indian problem, the problem of promising the moon in trade but not following up the promises with anything to back them.

It is here that recent remarks by Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie regarding India’s basket of woes has to be watched carefully. Mr Shourie also happens to be the minister in charge of economic development in India’s northeastern states.

A key difference in India’s headache in Kashmir and the difficulties it faces in the seven or eight states in the northeast is marked by the relative absence of the Marwaris at least as yet in Kashmir. The Kashmir Muslim seems to have been a good enough trader, protected further by key elements of the special status India accords to the disputed region.

By contrast, the northeast is saturated with the Marwari business community.

Interestingly, both as disinvestment minister and as minister in charge of northeast India, Mr Shourie’s decisions are of considerable interest to the Marwari community. I know it because I talk to them on a fairly regular basis. In the last budget, the government gave specific travel concessions to the northeast and to the tea industry largely located there. Who were the main beneficiaries? The business community that controls much of the economy of almost all the border states.

Any honest government official who has links with the region would tell you that the indigenous people of the northeastern states get only sympathy from New Delhi, while the business community corners the subsidy that comes with it.

For example, one state in northeast India sells petrol cheaper than the neighbouring one because it is heavily subsidized. So it gets more than its need of fuel from Delhi and sells the surplus to the neighbourhood for a profit. No marks for guessing who runs the fuel business. This is just one small, neat and underhand way to make a quick, easy profit, in a region where Indian troops are battling a 50-year-old debilitating set of insurgencies.

At a recent lecture titled ‘Forging the National Will’, Mr Shourie dwelt on his pet subject of China as a source of worry, saying its clout was ever increasing and its future strategy in South and Southeast Asia was aimed at pressing India at its vulnerable points.

He termed this “murder with a borrowed knife: hence its arms aid to Pakistan, its advances in Myanmar.”

But perhaps his most important admission, although it may not have been intended as an admission, was the statement that India’s recent nuclear tests would be worthless without a healthy, vibrant nation to be defended.

He likened the defence forces of India to an iron railing around a tree. But the fence will not be able to save the tree, if the tree “has been hollowed by termites from within.

“This constitutes the central threat to our security in the coming decades, the crumbling of the scaffolding of the state, and is the one all of us must work together to remedy,” Mr Shourie said.

Did Mr Shourie know these facts before the events of May 1998? If yes, then what was the point of having a nuclear agenda, apart from building an imposing edifice on crumbling grounds. Was it not necessary at that time to consider the need to fortify and consolidate the national base before embarking on a blusterous adventure of nuclear tests? And did that prevent Kargil?

The eight states that Mr Shourie is in charge of comprise Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and Sikkim. They have strengths that encompass an emerging market of 400 million people.

The region has 8 per cent of India’s total land space with 4 per cent of the country’s population. It has 38 per cent of the national hydropower potential because of the presence of the country’s largest perennial water system, natural gas reserves of 190 billion cubic metres, coal reserves of 909 million tons, hydro-electric potential estimated at 49,000mw, oil reserves of 513 million tons.

Also, it possesses large mineral resources, including limestone reserves of 4,933 million tons, and a forest cover which is 25 per cent of the country’s forest area.

A virtually tax-free fiscal package. But that’s the rub. Who gets the benefits? Certainly not the local people.

Some Indian analysts have advocated a change in the demography of the border states such as Kashmir and the northeastern areas as a way of controlling the rebellions brewing there. They cite the takeover of Tibet by the Han Chinese and the Israeli settlement policies as good examples of demographic changes aiding political objectives.

Perhaps the presence of the large and prosperous Indian business community in the northeast, if not as yet in Kashmir, may be seen an extension of a similar demographic policy. In which case India still has to find an acceptable antidote to the allergy that troubles Gen Ershad, and which appears to throw even its own border states into a paroxysm of wild reactions every now and then.

Sale of girl: are we living in medieval age?

KAWISH writes that once again the sale of a minor girl has been reported by the press. This time 10-year-old Najma was married to 40-year-old Shabbir by her father. The man had bought a buffalo from Shabbir for Rs20,000 but was not able to pay him the money. This led him to hand over his daughter to Shabbir to clear his debt.

This event will not surprise our rural people as they have been witness to such things every now and then, without realizing that such trade is an ultimate violation of human rights. In the latest instance, not only a minor girl was married, without her consent, to a man of his father’s age, she was also criminally assaulted before reaching the age of puberty.

Both the parties involved in this heinous crime should be punished. Moreover, the policy-making institutions should evolve a strategy to curb such crimes, on the one hand, and spread awareness among the rural populace about the rights of children, particularly girls, on the other.

The daily also laments that the Jacobabad police are trying to rescue the accused of the murder of newsman Shahid Soomro. The police have on purpose failed to recover the weapons and the vehicle used in the offence. It proves that they are deliberately trying to weaken the murder case. And this is happening amid continued protests by the journalists, demands by the district governments for justice and assurances by the Sindh governor and the federal information minister in this regard. The governor and the minister should see to it that their assurances do not prove to be hollow promises.

Tameer-i-Sindh writes that the spectre of drought is again looming large in the Thar desert but the government is doing nothing, except distributing wheat among the Tharis. That process also does not seem to benefit the drought-hit people as reports of irregularities into it are appearing in the newspapers. Apart from taking effective relief measures for the time being, the Sindh government should seek a permanent solution to the recurring drought, as this is not impossible in this age of technology. For this, a new department can be created to save the people of the arid areas of Thar, Kachho and Kohistan from drought, which strikes them after every couple of years.

Ibrat says that the debate over the release of Indus water downstream Kotri has been continuing for the last 10 years. At a recent meeting, Punjab stuck to its opposition to water release downstream Kotri, terming it a wastage of water. However, it has also been indicated that the federal government is at last going to conduct a study on the issue. This study should be taken up without any delay, as the discontinuation of the discharge of the river water into the sea has already caused a tremendous loss.

Because of this, mangroves over thousands of acres have vanished and, consequently, thousands of acres of fertile land has been eroded by sea intrusion and more land has been rendered barren due to seepage of saline sea water. Moreover, the very existence of marine life, which provides livelihood to the local fisherfolk and foreign exchange to the country’s coffer, is threatened. Are not these facts enough to show that discharge of the river water into the sea is a natural phenomenon and its stoppage is destroying ecology, as well as economy, of the area?

Awami Awaz suggests that with the restoration of democracy, the armymen should be withdrawn from Wapda and KESC and the administrative control of the bodies should be handed over to experienced engineers. The army people have succeeded in solving some of the problems faced by the two power authorities, but it is impossible for them to take the two bodies out of the financial deficit they have been trapped in. Therefore, it will be better for the army to get rid of the mess. Similarly, it should also withdraw from other civil institutions with the restoration of the civil rule.