Square pegs in round holes

Many a student and faculty member in the capital's educational institutions were wondering this week how to master the art of putting square pegs in round holes. Whether it is an art or a science is a different academic debate but putting square pegs in round holes requires great expertise. That too, if it is possible.

But, if the task is entrusted to ex-army generals, the impossibility seems to assume an air of possibility. That's precisely what President Gen Pervez Musharraf has tried to achieve by putting Lt-Gen (retd) Javed Ashraf Qazi in-charge of the education ministry at the centre.

With spy activities and the railways experience already in his bag, the former spy chief in his first public pronouncements vowed to carry forth the vision of achieving 'education for all' targets by inducting more armymen into the education sector.

The pronouncements by the ex-general could have many interpretations and consequences but those in the education sector wondered if the army had too much surplus manpower which could be spared for the education tasks.

After announcements of cutting down the tail by some 50,000, perhaps the ex-general is aware that more armymen could be spared for the tasks he has envisioned.

After all, with forced aspirations of peace with India and the concept of strategic depth gathering dust in the old GHQ files due to heavy US presence in Afghanistan, the officer cadres have to be kept busy lest some of them have funny ideas like Ziaul Islam Abbassi and his group had in another era and time.

Running intelligence setup is somehow different from intelligence required to run the affairs of education ministry. Perhaps, that's why many in the education sector were taken by surprise when the five-year love affair of Zobaida Jalal with education ministry was brought to a sudden end in the cabinet reshuffle.

Having rendered services, which Gen Musharraf believes were good but could have been better, she is now mulling options to set the special education on the right course.

The NGO involvement and award of contracts would now characterize the special education initiatives for the betterment of all those who matter as happened in the education ministry.

In most cases, the multi-million funding for the education sector which flowed in during the era of Ms Jalal was conditional. It had to be disbursed through NGOs. In an instance, the multi-million-dollar funding was accepted despite reservations of the security setup over installation of satellite receivers in remote schools on the instance of donors. It is anybody's guess that satellite receivers would only be used for educational purposes and not for any other business.

With so much funds still in the pipeline, the ex-spy chief meanwhile would try to clear the muck which plagues the madressahs. As head of the spy agency which once doled out the US funds to the same madressahs for fighting the US proxy war against the former Soviet Union in the wild terrains of Afghanistan, Gen (retired) Qazi is too well aware how to hit the nail on the head.

He has the benefit of having the lists of all the Ulema and religious leaders who received state funds in the name of motivating religious students for Jihad la US style during the 1980s and could be a hard taskmaster to implement the agenda.

With demands for results, implementation of madressah reforms would be among one of the top agendas the ministry is set to pursue under his command. Like the ex-general now in-charge of the ministry, Ms Jalal also had great fondness for the ex-armymen in the education business.

Said to be a blue eyed appointee of Ms Jalal, Brig (retd) Maqsoodul Hasan got third consecutive extension as director general of the Federal Directorate of Education. Several identical petitions challenging his extension in violation of rules and regulations are pending adjudication in the Lahore High Court's Rawalpindi bench.

The extent of disgruntlement in the federal capital's institutions over violation of the principle of merit which Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has vowed to carry forward can only be gauged by the fact that Educational Joint Action Committee and the Federal Government Teacher's Association are up in arms against the retired brigadier appointed as their boss.

Interestingly enough, the committee and the association contend that minimum required educational qualifications for the post of the FDE director-general is a second class postgraduate degree and the retired brigadier does not even hold that to be eligible for the post what to talk of third consecutive extension in the tenure.

If the ex-general now in-charge of the education portfolio plans to make such similar inductions of the armymen, one can well imagine how the teacher's community would react to that.

Already, the number of ex-armymen running the country's premier educational institutions from serene environments of Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) to Punjab University to Peshawar University is a cause of concern amongst the professional qualified educationists.

In Quaid-i-Azam University, Capt (retd) U.A.G Issani has tried to meet the high educational expertise of his many colleagues by doing a PhD. Having a doctorate degree is a rare distinction in Pakistan and the ex-armyman turned bureaucrat turned educationist would be in the honours list of the university along with many PhD holders.

Lessons from Malaysia's experience

DR Mahathir Mohammad was Mr Shaukat Aziz's first foreign visitor. The former Malaysian prime minister, who stepped down in October 2003 after 22 years in power, met the new Pakistani prime minister in Islamabad on September 4, exactly a week after the latter was sworn in. He also addressed members of the new cabinet at the Prime Minister's House.

Dr Mahathir's three-day visit to Pakistan reinforces a policy which the current Pakistani leadership shares with him, viz., moderate Islam. The philosophy of moderate Islam - consistent with tolerance, knowledge, modernity and development - is the secret behind Malaysia's famed economic success, apart from hard work and a focused vision.

Malaysia is a multi-racial and multi-religious country where 60 per cent of the population are Muslim Malays and 40 per cent are non-Muslim Chinese and Indians. No Malaysian leader can afford to espouse views and enforce policies which alienate the minorities if he wanted to achieve the kind of economic success which the country has achieved, all the more so when the minorities make up the main economic engine of the country.

The policy of moderation and tolerance helped to build Malaysia into the colourful cosmopolitan society that its tourism ministry so proudly projects over international television channels, with people from different beliefs and cultures living in peace and harmony, all working together for the development and prosperity of Malaysia.

Earlier in the 1960s, Malaysia, too, had gone through the experience of disunity and bloodshed. The brutal racial riots in 1969 only showed how the politics of hatred and insecurity can ruin the country and its people.

Gradually thereafter, especially since Dr Mahathir came into power in 1981, Malaysia adopted a two-pronged policy of special privileges to economically uplift the disgruntled Muslim Malay community, while at the same time reassuring the non-Muslim minorities that their economic and political interests would be protected and promoted. In other words, equality for all races.

On this basis, the Mahathir-engineered economic boom founded on electronics and manufacturing lifted millions of Malaysians from poverty into the middle class. But the rural poor, mostly Muslim farmers and fishermen in the states of Kelantan and Trengganu, were left behind. The result was that these two states fell under the rule of the opposition Islamic party PAS in the general elections held during Dr Mahathir's reign.

The Islamic opposition, Dr Mahathir told BBC in an interview in October 2003, is a threat to Malaysia. PAS wants to turn multi-racial Malaysia into an Islamic theocracy.

It advocates shariah law for Malaysia. But all this is just a political gimmick, Dr Mahathir told BBC. The shariah law cannot be applied throughout Malaysia because 40 per cent of the population are not Muslims, asserted Dr Mahathir.

PAS, he also said, is not an Islamic party as such but a mere political party which makes use of Islam for political gain, and not even the right kind of Islam at that.

Dr Mahathir's successor, the new prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, has been working on undercutting the support for PAS through a policy of modernizing the rural sector.

Since taking over from Dr Mahathir last October, he has been advocating a Green Revolution that involves an infusion of capital, bio- technology and the introduction of new, genetically modified seeds that could turn poverty stricken farmers into rich rural entrepreneurs.

The success of this policy so far can be judged by the fact that in this year's general elections held in March, Prime Minister Badawi's UMNO-led National Front coalition, which has ruled Malaysia since independence from the British in 1957, not only trounced PAS in the race for federal parliament but regained control of one of the two states ruled by PAS, viz., Trengganu.

In his first independence day message as prime minister on August 31, Abdullah Badawi reiterated his commitment to the basic principle which has made Malaysia what it is today - equality of all regardless of race or religion.

"Let all citizens of Malaysia, without feeling inferior, without feeling sidelined, irrespective of race or religion, rise to become statesmen in our own land. We are equal, we are all Malaysians."

Building on Dr Mahathir's success, Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi seems to be steering Malaysia well on course towards the target of making the country a developed first world nation by the year 2020.

Dr Mahathir's advice for Pakistan? Firstly, reconciliation and ironing out the disagreements of different communities within the country, particularly between the Shias and Sunnis. Work out how they can live together, tolerate each other, be more accommodating with each other, and not let emotions take hold.

He advocated this policy of mutual respect and understanding not only between the two major communities but also among the coalition partners in the ruling government.

Malaysia, he told members of the new cabinet in Islamabad, also has a ruling coalition of 14 parties but no problems of government instability because of understanding and mutual respect amongst the parties.

Secondly, Dr Mahathir advised emphasis on education. There should be maximum allocation for the education sector, and modern knowledge study should be included in the Madressahs.

The Madressahs should not be teaching politics, particularly the politics of hatred, which is against the teachings of Islam. Nor should the Ulema be allowed to use religion for personal gain and to advance their political goals.

Malaysia, he said, achieved more than 95 per cent literacy rate by allocating over 20 per cent of its budget to the education sector. Modern knowledge and exchange of experience enables the economy to be strengthened so that it can compete effectively in the world, he stressed.

Dr Mahathir's final advice was for the economy: regeneration of the agricultural sector, job-oriented industrialization, investment-friendly policies and expansion of markets for the country's products. Pakistan, Dr Mahathir forecasted, had the potential to become a strong and great Muslim country.

Drug trafficking more than ever

Sale of narcotics is picking up in the district like in other parts of the province, exposing tall claims police are making about keeping an eye on the menace. According to police, they are launching anti-narcotics drive successfully, though actually only small selling units are being raided and drug addicts rounded up. Main suppliers of drugs are allegedly being running the business without any check.

It is alleged that some of the 'black sheep' in the police are patronizing drug trafficking on a larger scale. Those who move against any pusher or police official patronizing the illegal trade are allegedly harassed through registration of fake cases.

Drug pushers consider it relatively easier to move on the main Jhang-Sargodha Road where Sahiwal police station is situated and transport drugs to Jhang and Multan, instead of using the Mianwali-Muzaffargarh Road for Multan and the Mankera Road for taking drugs to Jhang through Dajil check post.

It is pertinent to mention here that Dajil check post links the Dera Ismail Khan and Bhakkar districts through a bridge over the Indus and is frequently being used for smuggling from the NWFP to the Punjab. The claims of the government and police that the check post has been specially marked for checking crime have proved wrong.

The Customs officials hold the motorway police responsible for helping smugglers transport drugs, but SP (motorway) Mian Asif says the motorway police cannot stop any vehicle unless it is found violating rules. "A suspicious vehicle should be checked within districts," he said while denying the charge of helping traffickers.

He says if any person has complaint about involvement of any official of the motorway police in the crime he can come up to the higher-ups with solid evidence on the basis of which the guilty official will be brought to book.

Muhammad Anwar of Sahiwal alleged that ASI Hashmat Ali Shah, who has now been suspended from service, was involved in drug smuggling and whoever tried to move against him he was involved in fake cases.

He said the ASI implicated his brother Dr Sarwar in a case of possessing a kilogram of charas and a pistol. The case was lodged against him on April 20, 2003 under the Control of Narcotics Substance Act of 1997. The police official also booked Dr Sarwar in another case, which was lodged under section 9/B of the same act for allegedly keeping 507 grams of heroin.

However, investigation revealed that the ASI had implicated the doctor for his complaints about trafficking against the ASI. Besides, the ASI allegedly received Rs10,000 bribe from Anwar after which a case was registered against the former by the Anti-Corruption Establishment on July 1, 2004.

The case of alleged possession of heroine was dismissed by a judicial magistrate while the other case, which the Sargodha Range DIG police found fake in his report, is yet to be decided by a sessions court.

Hashmat Ali, who reportedly enjoyed support of higher-ups, initially avoided appearing before the investigation officer despite the orders of the DIG. However, the DIG had to contact the AIG of special branch in Lahore to ensure his attendance on April 17, 2004.

He also managed to get reports by certain agencies to show that Dr Sarwar was a trafficker. However, it transpired during investigation that the reports were fabricated and one of those was even authenticated by a former SSP, Dr Tariq Masood Yasin.

Muhammad Yasin, a resident of Sahiwal, also confirmed that the ASI was involved in narcotics trade and he had forced his two sons - Muhammad Qurban and Muhammad Luqman - into it.

Meanwhile, DIG Fayyaz Ahmad Mir and Sargodha SSP Muhammad Naeem Khan claim to have been jointly working to bring about change in the attitude of policemen. While inaugurating a model police station at Satellite Town, Mr Mir stressed that the police had to mend their ways and improve mode of investigation to meet the challenges.

He claimed that a reception counter at the police station was first of its kind in the country to facilitate visitors. He said the government was now providing maximum facilities to the police force to improve its performance.

The DIG said 61 patrol pickets had been set up in the Sargodha Range - 18 in Sargodha, 17 in Mianwali, 14 in Khushab and 12 in Bhakkar. For that matter, he said, the Punjab IGP had promised to consider the request of providing more force to the Sargodha and its adjoining districts.

Earlier, DPO Dr Naeem Khan said the building had been designed keeping in view the convenience of the police as well as visitors. This model police station would prove a milestone in the development of the police force. The police station had been set up on a four-kanal tract at a cost of Rs8 million.

'Gandhi's Western face'

Two weeks ago I gave you excerpts from Liberty or Death by Patrick French. Let us see today what he thinks of Indian politics in the 1940s. He writes: When the Congress leadership was released from Ahmednagar Fort for the first Simla Conference in 1945, Abul Kalam Azad had still been the party's president, owing to the break in democratic political developments and the imprisonments during the Quit India campaign.

His had been a cynical appointment, intended as a rather feeble sop to India's Muslims. During the elections of 1945-46 Azad declined to let Patel play an active role, since he disliked him and believed he was a communalist.

In his dealings with the cabinet delegation, Azad went beyond the brief given to him by the Congress Working Committee, and 1946 marked the end of his career as a serious politician; from then on he was little more than the token Congress Muslim that Jinnah had always claimed he was.

The election of his successor as Congress president was one of the most important decisions in the movement's history, since the nominee was almost certain to be the first prime minister of free India.

The vote had been held during April 1946, in the midst of the cabinet delegation's deliberations, and was a significant distraction for the Congress leaders. Azad wished to stay on, but the idea was soon vetoed by Gandhi, who had grown to distrust him.

Twelve of the party's fifteen provincial committees chose Patel, who was the clear choice of most rank-and-file Congress activists. But Gandhi proposed his protege Jawaharlal Nehru, who had not even been nominated, since he was younger, more conciliatory and more palatable to the outside world than Patel. As one ICS officer put it, Nehru was 'Gandhi's Western face'.

Ironically, half a century later, Patel's origins, authenticity and prejudices might have made him a far more acceptable choice for the job than Nehru. Although he abided by Gandhi's decision, Patel from then on declined to follow the Mahatma's political guidance, and 1946 marked a break between them despite their many years comradeship.

The Sardar was wise enough to know that real power did not depend on your official title, and consolidated his own role within Congress. He admired Nehru and accepted his leadership, although at times he grew irritated by what he saw as his 'emotional outbursts' and 'childish innocence'.

Gandhi was quite explicit in his choice, saying that the chosen one, 'who was educated at Harrow and Cambridge and became a barrister is greatly needed to carry on the negotiations with the Englishmen'.

Nehru's international outlook made him an acceptable public face for Congress, and the appointment enabled him to perhaps inadvertently sow the seeds of a quasi-royal dynasty when he allowed his under qualified daughter Indira to become Congress president in 1958.

As one fictional character said: 'What is so comforting is that the man at the helm of affairs is so much like a British gentleman.' Yet, as another novelist asked, would people have taken so much notice of Motilal, Jawaharlal, Indira, Sanjay and Rajiv 'if the family came from south of the Vindhyas, if it had a dark skin and spoke Tamil or Telugu, if its name was Venkataraman or Balasubramaniam?'

By the time Pandit (an honorific generally given to learned Brahmins, although in this case referring to the fact that the family were Kashmiri Hindus) Nehru was released from prison in 1945, he had spent a total of nine years of his life incarcerated, often in harsh conditions.

He had been hit by lathis while demonstrating on the streets of his home town, and had experienced his own mother being beaten by policemen till she bled. He was now fifty-six years old, a widower, and his friend and brother-in-law Ranjit Pandit had died behind bars during the war. Somehow, Nehru remained optimistic and free from bitterness. There was, however, an unstable edge to him, and a determination to win power as quickly as possible.

Jawaharlal Nehru's reputation as a world statesman at the time of his death in 1964 masks the inadequacies of his political achievement before 1947. Despite misjudgements in old age during his final years as prime minister of free India, his premiership was by any standards a triumph.

Under his leadership, India was to turn from a country on the brink of chaos and civil war to one with substantial internal coherence and a functioning system of government.

The Princely States were integrated into the Indian Union, secular parliamentary democracy was entrenched, education was expanded, a specific if ultimately misguided foreign policy was devised, and laws on inheritance, caste and civil liberties were introduced.

Any one of these accomplishments can be criticized for its failings, but the potential for a complete administrative collapse in India in the late 1940s should not be forgotten.

To be concluded

A bit like the cockroach joke

Do this simple test on the Internet. Go to the Google search engine and look for the following phrases: "Hindus breed like rats", "Muslims breed like rats", "Jews breed like rats". You will find one or several answers matching all the three inquiries.

The test fails to return a 'ratty' answer for Christians though, but there are one or two responses to Catholics, but not so for Protestants when juxtaposed with the phrase "breed like rats".

Population growth, both real or imagined, among the practitioners of rival religions traditionally leads to insecurities in the opposite camp, which in turn contributes to its usage in hate speech. That's what happened in India last week.

However, something else was also happening here. The religious census data was a well-aimed effort to create communal mischief, to put it mildly. A four-year old report, giving a deliberately slanted view against Muslims, was mysteriously pulled out of the dust-laden files and made public.

After the damage was done and rightwing Hindutva bigots were activated, population experts began questioning the findings of the census that says Muslims are the fastest growing community in the country. By then it was already too late.

The experts concluded this was a miscalculation since Muslim- majority Jammu and Kashmir state, which India lays claim on, was not included in the 1991 census. According to government figures, the Muslim community grew by 36 per cent between 1991-2001 - while population growth rates for other religious groups fell.

Census Commissioner J.K. Banthia blamed the media for misinterpreting the data. Not that it matters much. Whether it was the media or Mr Banthia to blame, the garbled figures have already become part of an insidious Hindutva campaign in Maharashtra, where communally charged elections are due next month.

Never mind the fact that far from increasing from 34.5 per cent to 36 per cent over the last 10 years, as the report claimed, the growth rate in the Muslim community has actually declined to 29.3 per cent, as the experts later explained.

And the footnote clarifying that the data had not been adjusted to include fresh figures from Kashmir was subsequently added. Which subsequently revealed that the Muslim community's growth rate has actually declined at a greater rate than of the Hindus.

According to figures released by the census commissioner, India's Muslim community now stands at 138 million, or 13.4 per cent of the total population, while Hindus account for 80.5 per cent of all Indians. Christians make up the third largest group (24 million), followed by Sikhs (19 million).

The simple fact is that Muslim population growth as well as other indicators such as education and the male-female ratio have looked healthy or poor together with the majority Hindus depending on the state they belong to.

Literacy, for example, is almost as high among the Muslims as Hindus in Kerala. The state is regarded as a triumph for many positive social indicators. Hindus in the southern Indian state have 90.2 per cent literacy, with a healthy 86.7 per cent literate population among Hindu women. Muslims score 89.4 per cent literacy within their community in Kerala with Muslim women registering 85.5 per cent literacy.

In backward Bihar, Muslim literacy levels take a battering and so do the figures for Hindus. There are 42 per cent literate Muslims in Bihar against 47.9 per cent literate Hindus. There are 31.5 per cent literate Muslim women as opposed to 33.4 per cent literate Hindu women.

But all these statistics are quite useless in several essential ways. They do not tell the story of the fractious Hindu society, in which there are more socially dispossessed people than the total population of all other communities put together.

That a majority of Indian Muslims share their misfortune with a majority of Hindus however is no solace to the Hinduvta fanatics. This reality does not suit their divisive agenda.

On the other hand, to seriously understand the question sought to be posed in India, all that anyone had to do is to look at the travails of the more prosperous Malaysia. The Muslim majority country is concerned about a sharp decline in the number of Muslim marriages. Now it has urged mosques to play matchmaker. There has been a drop of about 10,000 marriages between 1998 and 2002.

The Institute of Islamic Understanding Malaysia (Ikim) says that a total of 95,312 Muslim couples tied the knot in 1998, but this figure fell to 90,267 in 2001 and 85,588 in 2002. The organization has urged Malaysian Muslims to look for "love in the mosque, not on the Internet".

In the final analysis, no one can seriously seek to help anyone who wants to draw the wrong conclusions from any set of data. Remember the joke about the cockroach which was taught to obey a whistled command as part of a laboratory test? Every time the cockroach crawled to the whistle, the experimenter broke one of its legs.

But given its will power, even with one leg left, the insect managed to hobble forward. When the last leg too was taken away, the cockroach was unable to follow the command. And so the scientist concluded: "When you break all the six legs of a cockroach, it goes deaf."

India's census report along religious categories last week was a bit like that cockroach joke: a cruel experiment, which offered a ready means for quacks and bigots to draw their own dangerous conclusions with insidious intent.

* * * * *

It was upsetting to see so many leading members of the South Asia Free Media Association riveted to that one issue last week. Give us visas, they said. We are not RAW agents.

We are not ISI agents. Give us visas. So the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan, who made for the captive audience, found an easy opportunity to play to the gallery. Here, take your visas, they said in unison. Consider them granted, they assured the visibly pleased group of visa seekers.

It's difficult to understand how or even why any journalist from either country should plead for preferential treatment when they haven't written one word about the hundreds of old men and women who have to daily line up in front of the Pakistan high commission in New Delhi or the Indian mission in Islamabad to be allowed to make that one long denied journey to their loved ones?

'A long haul for Muslims'

The post-9/11 scenario has not only changed the West's perception of the rest of the world and heightened its arrogance, it has also put the Muslim world under pressure to undertake the long haul towards moderation and improve its knowledge-base and skills to come out of ignorance and poverty.

This is the view of Prof Saiyid Hamid, chancellor of Hamdard University, New Delhi, who was here to participate in an international conference on the challenges confronting the Muslim world. He said the Muslim world could not remain oblivious to the gathering storm and pleaded for a change in mindset.

When the soft-spoken scholar from India was asked how Indian Muslims looked at the problems confronting the Ummah, Prof. Saiyid Hamid said his countrymen had their own problems, but they were also anxious about the general state of Muslims world wide.

The negative impact of American unilateralism on the international order, especially the Muslim world, could not he ignored. Regrettably, Muslim leaders had not tried to counter US influence, a situation that was due also to the fact that governments in some of the Muslim countries were not responsible to the people. This had weakened them and they were not able to take bold steps.

Prof Saiyid Hamid, an embodiment of extreme caution, believes that the West has become desperate because it wants to completely deny Muslims their natural resources. "Oil wealth in a sense has been a misfortune in disguise because it has tempted technologically better equipped people to come over and dominate the scene," he argued.

In order to get out of the existing situation, Muslims should discard their negative attitudes and false contentment and fatalism. He emphasized the correlation between education and progress and called for popularizing modern education focused on science, mathematics and technology. The division of the Ummah between alumni of the two great schools of education - religious and secular - has to be ended, Prof Hamid said.

Stressing the need for extensive social reforms, he was of the view that the "extreme form of purdah being observed in the sub- continent not only affected the health of women but also reduced their role as productive citizens".

The 'hijab' that our orthodox women observe is a far cry from the way hijab was understood in the early days of Islam. He also advocated that the Friday sermon should be translated in regional language so that the common Muslims who did not understand Arabic could assimilate the message.

Reflecting on the state of Indian Muslims, Prof Hamid said they were not a very cohesive group. They were divided by the river Narmada and into north India they had not been able to completely jettison their feudal past.

In the south, because trade was the tradition, they were doing better than their co- religionists in the north. The literacy rate among Muslims overall was lower than the national literacy rate, and there was also a high incidence of dropouts.

Asked as to why there were still communal riots, as in Gujarat, and why the majority community had not been able to resolve this problem, the Indian scholar pointed out that the fight against the Gujarat riots was waged by Hindus.

"That is perhaps an asset of India, that if there is one extremist group of Hindus, there are many large-hearted Hindus also. Some of the civil servants, including a Hindu district magistrate, had resigned on this issue, and the former district magistrate is now busy in rehabilitating those who were uprooted by the Gujarat riots.

Expressway's human cost

"Is it fair that I put in 23 years of hard work to call a place my own and I am given less than 24 hours' notice to leave. And then, right in front of my eyes, my lifetime's accomplishment is bulldozed to the ground," laments 54-year-old Din Mohammad.

A year back, Din had bought a small general store for Rs25,000 and built a house for his family of 13, which cost a whopping Rs150,800. "And what do I get instead?" he asks. "Just Rs50,000 and a plot of 80 square metres in a godforsaken place?"

Din is not alone. The same sorry tale is repeated by every second person you meet who has been relocated due to the 16.5-kilometre-long Lyari Expressway project, conceived in 1989 to relieve transport congestion in the inner city.

A recent survey, titled "Livelihood substitution: the case of the Lyari Expressway", carried out by the Urban Resource Centre takes a look at how evictions impact people by touching many aspects of their lives. Among others, the survey points how such measures cruelly affect the social and economic life of the evictees.

"Most of the evictees had lived in the settlements for two or more generations. They had grown up together and their parents had known each other. Strong support systems had developed related to school admissions for children, family and neighbourhood conflict resolution, lobbying for services, seeking employment," the report notes.

All this has been shattered, making the new settlers vulnerable. Even the economic aspect does not seem to hold any promise. The report states that the value of their new property is a fraction of the value of their properties in the Lyari Corridor.

Jobs are not always available at the relocated settlement and displaced people have to travel long distances to get to their place of work which is an extra burden both on their meagre resources and time.

Women who were supplementing the household income have also lost employment. Many have no option but to leave work as the children, especially young daughters, cannot be left unsupervised in the new neighbourhood. Even credit from shopkeepers is no longer available.

Life is not made any easier with the absence of gas and sewerage connections, improper management of solid waste disposal and dependence on water through tankers.

However there is a silver lining here for some. Those who previously lived below the flood line are now legal owners of a house at the resettlement locations. "This is something that they could never have acquired if they had continued living in the Lyari Corridor, given the existing laws in Pakistan," the report says.

Abandoned by police

The writ of the federal government may or may not run in the inaccessible parts of the country, but if you want to see an area where the Sindh government's writ does not run smack in the heart of Karachi, go to Jacob Lines - or, what is popularly called, "Behind Jacob Lines."

As a matter of policy, the Karachi police have abandoned the area to its fate. The area is run, controlled, monopolized and occupied by those who operate inter-city buses. The scene is one of anarchy. Long and wide-bodied buses are parked on both sides of the three major roads, thus narrowing the area left for traffic.

There are unauthorized booking offices, besides supporting services. These include maintenance crews - wheels being changed and buses washed and cleaned right on the roads, tea shops, hawkers with snacks and pushcarts with fruits, taxis and rickshaws bringing passengers, luggage being hauled on to bus roofs, and conductors soliciting passengers for "Hyderabad! Hyderabad!"

The chaotic aspect comes into play when a bus is making a turn or coming to park. In that process, the road is blocked, holding up traffic. Surprisingly, the bus drivers do show some courtesy and try to be helpful to those unlucky motorists who have the misfortune to get trapped in the mess.

More than a year ago, one of the roads leading to a popular biryani shop was dug up. People thought it would be re-built. They were wrong, for it has remained that way.

All these roads appear painted with grease, soot and slime, and littered with the transport industry's flotsam. Conspicuous by its absence is the Sindh government's symbol of authority - the police.

Liaquatabad flyover

While the city government has plugged the cracks that emerged in the Liaquatabad flyover late last month, it has not been explained why they occurred in the first place.

Reportedly, investigations have disclosed that substandard concrete was used and this is what came apart. What is more worrisome is the fact that the city government has made no arrangements for quality control of such mega-projects.

Contractors use material at will and this is not properly supervised by the city government's relevant officials. Considering that the government is about to build 12 more such flyovers in the city in the coming year, this is cause for concern. It seems that some quarters are only interested in having the flyovers built and then left to the mercy of fate.

The maintenance of all flyovers built by the city government is also poor and this needs to be brought to the notice of the city fathers. The appearance of these bridges is distasteful as enterprising advertisers have painted unauthorized advertisements on the sides of these bridges that promise a sure success in exams as well as cures for various ailments.

Nobody seems to clean these overhead bridges and in some cases the pavements have caved in, with the result that pedestrians can actually see the ground below. The space that surrounds the flyovers has mostly been encroached upon by illegal parking arrangements, bus depots and even by drug addicts.

Boring politics

Public meetings of opposition parties have become a low-key affair in the city. The Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians and Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal have failed to mobilize their workers against alleged irregularities in the Tharparkar by-elections and the military operation in Wana.

Their public meetings on these issues did not pull crowds and could have been held in the drawing rooms of PPP-P chairman Makhdoom Amin Fahim and MMA president Qazi Hussain Ahmad who came to the city to speak at party conferences. Indeed, a ban on the entry of top MMA leaders into Karachi for one month did not cause even a stir in political circles.

Instead of taking advantage of the disarray in opposition parties, the ruling coalition in Sindh is fast disintegrating. The appointment of Sindh Chief Minister Ghulam Arbab Rahim and his minister Imtiaz Ahmad Shaikh as president and secretary-general of the Pakistan Muslim League, respectively, has caused further divisions in the party. Pir Pagara has revived his own faction and has decided to take on the chief of the unified PML, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain.

The PML's main ally in Sindh, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, is reported to be facing another rift and has launched a contact campaign to brief its workers about what it says are conspiracies against the party. With the opposition as well as the ruling coalition grappling with divisive forces in their ranks, Karachians are fast losing interest in politics.

Seasonal humps

A morning walker along Karsaz Road often wondered why the four speed humps across the road were levelled every summer. These humps are set near a college and a naval housing society, and are so large that the walker's school going niece calls them semi-circles. One day curiosity got the better of him and he asked military workers whittling away at the humps why there were removed on a yearly basis.

The workers told him that an arms exhibition was organized at the Expo Centre every summer. Coming from the airport, important visitors, including the president, used this road, they said, adding that the speed breakers forced their motorcades to slow down to such an extent that they could be easily targeted by sharpshooters positioned in a nearby building. The humps reappeared after the conclusion of the exhibition, they said.

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