Taking on the billboards
These are the billboards or hoardings, modern-day urban monsters, that the city nazim, Syed Mustafa Kamal, has sought to challenge.
In a statement that appeared in Wednesday’s newspapers, the nazim asked the relevant agencies to remove all billboards across the city and begin this cleanup operation in Saddar. He said Rs67.5 million the city government had received, against a target of Rs2 billion, would be repaid to the advertisers and owners of billboards. He said the action was prompted by improperly and illegally installed billboards, erected in violation of bylaws.
The nazim declared that the eyesores would be replaced with aesthetically pleasing signs and the city government hoped to generate as much as Rs5 billion annually from this.
A city government official told Dawn that there were mega billboards which fetched the advertiser up to Rs500,000 annually but he paid the city government as little as Rs1,500. He said outdoor advertising had become a multi-billion business.
He pointed out that the errant advertisers did what they did with the connivance of corrupt bureaucrats. He alleged that some bureaucrats had made money by allowing the installation of billboards as big as 200x40 feet, which no bylaw allowed.
According to Mr Durrani, during the tenure of the last caretaker city government, there was total anarchy in the city government’s advertising department and the officials concerned granted permission to anyone they wished.
He said the city nazim should have cancelled the NoCs issued during the interim period between the previous and the present elected governments, and suggested that this department should be devolved to the 18 towns.
There are neon-signs and billboards on thoroughfares which give the city a festive look. But most of them are ill- planned. They may be obstructing the movement of traffic and pedestrians, and posing a danger to life and limb. There are also billboards that block the passage of air for people living in apartments.
But from where will the city government repay Rs67.5 million received from the advertisers? Is the money intact?
MUSHTAQ Yousufi is arguably one of the greatest humorists in any language. Read him a little seriously and you might be tempted to pay him a tribute similar to the one Iqbal paid to Ghalib: “You have revealed it to the human intellect how high the bird of imagination can soar.”
But Yousufi remains a self-effacing person. Some have called the present one “the Yousufi era of Urdu humour”. But talk to Mushtaq Yousufi and he praises all humour writers, past and present.
At the inauguration of a book exhibition in the Defence Central Library the other day, when an admirer asked him whom he saw as second to him as a writer of humour, Yousufi smiled and pointed out that this wasn’t so — a first and a second. He praised all known humorists: “Ibn-i-Insha was a great humour writer. (There was) Shafiqur Rehman. In fact, I learned a lot from Colonel Mohammad Khan. And I wouldn’t have been what I am if there was no Patras Bukhari.” He did not stop there and added: “Some of the young writers are also doing a very good job.”
Earlier, in his speech he regretted that the reading habit was waning. “There were three major bookshops on Elphinstone Street alone. They have been replaced by shoe stores. The bookshops did not earn enough to keep going, but the shoe shops are raking in huge profits.”
THE third All Pakistan Music Conference held in Karachi last week attracted the biggest audience in its short history. However, the joy of witnessing live performances by a galaxy of classical musicians was marred by constant clatter from insensitive members of the public.
The second evening of the three-day programme was particularly disturbed, maybe because of the presence of a young crowd that had come for the Mekaal Hassan band performance. Perhaps the performance of this Lahore-based band — presenting Shah Hussain and Bulleh Shah in a semi-classical mode to western music — should have been placed last on the card so that the audience remained seated and orderly.
But even otherwise elderly and apprently serious looking people couldn’t sit still or quiet. Some were even seen trying to imitate the taan of the ustads as if they could do it better.
When Sindh Governor Ishratul Ibad came on the third and final night of the conference, the compere to the dismay of music-lovers chose to announce his arrival during the performance of Raza Ali Khan, the grandson of Bade Ghulam Ali Khan. And as if this were not enough, after the Indian guest had rendered two mesmerising ‘thumris’ and was about to proceed with a third one, the compere announced a short break to present a cheque worth a meagre Rs150,000 for the earthquake victims to the governor.
All very unsettling for classical music lovers.
IS it okay not to have something that is required by law if you say that you have applied for it and it is on its way? It sure seems like it — what with all these cars on the road with the ‘AFR’ number plates.
We hear all kinds of announcements that the government has disallowed private registration plates and plates that have not been issued by the excise and taxation department. So what about all these ‘AFR’ plates?
AFR stands for ‘Applied for registration’ and the numbers following give the year of the application. Thus there is an abundance of cars with plates of ‘AFR 2006’ or ‘AFR 2005’. Ironic as it may seem, there are also some vehicles running around town with ‘AFR 2003’ plates. The plates are the usual yellow and black which makes them look genuine from a distance.
It is not difficult to get your car registered as it only costs Rs1,000 or Rs1,500 and one wonders as to why vehicle owners can go to such lengths as to use AFR number plates instead of the lawful ones when they can spend hundreds of thousands on acquiring the latest models. Maybe this is why one sees all those car advertisements in the paper which say something like ‘model 1998, registered in 2004’.
And now for another kind of billboard. This one (picture) is on Khayaban-i-Ittehad in DHA and has been proudly installed by the Cantonment Board.
The charitable may just see it as a bad English translation of ‘Pakistan ki dharti sey piyar’, but the irreverent would read more into the word “soil”.
Why have such signs with such silly and childish slogans anyway?
— Karachian
email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com
For a genuine South Asian parliament
POPULAR leftist icon Tariq Ali was speaking in Delhi this past week to audiences of slum-dwellers, academics, factory workers and communist leaders. He addressed an anti-imperialist rally in the company of Prakash Karat, the CPI-M’s phlegmatic general secretary. He forcefully spoke in his Punjabi-accented Urdu to a sizeable rally about the growing resistance to American hegemony in Latin America, about the pivotal role played by Cuba in creating an alternative political space right in the backyard of the United States itself.
The audiences savoured his stories of the resistance under way in Latin America. He recalled how Cuba had dispatched 14,000 doctors in one go to Venezuela to set up people’s health infrastructures in the neighbouring country and how Venezuela had made available its enormous oil resources to Cuba and others in the region to sideline American domination of their economies.
The story of an old Venezuelan woman was a tear-jerker. When the middle class, nudged by Washington, appeared to be plotting against Chavez, and the economy was sinking into a serious crisis, Chavez undertook a tour of townships on the outskirts of Caracas. An old woman accosted the president, took him to her small rundown house where she was cooking a paltry meal.
“Chavez,” she told her president, “I have burnt my chairs for fuel, tomorrow it would be the table. I have two or three wooden doors in the house that would be enough fuel for the next several days. We’ll look after ourselves, so that you don’t get deterred from your mission to usher a new dawn for our people.”
The encounter gave the president some badly needed courage at a rare time when he was feeling truly low, Ali said, quoting from his numerous visits to Venezuela. The stories seemed so far away from South Asia’s own completely different kind of engagement with the United States, and yet the message was enticing enough to probe a salvage operation.
The opportunity came with one of Ali’s favourite ideas that came up at an informal chat with students and teachers at Delhi University when he dwelled on his dream of a South Asian union. This was perhaps the most tricky part of his lecture tour not only because even Tariq Ali didn’t seem to have a very clear answer to a student’s question: “How is your concept of a South Asian union different from the idea of Akhand Bharat, which the rightwing Hindus want?”
Tariq Ali tends to get impatient with those who come in the way of his brilliant flourishes. On this occasion he managed to mumble something to the effect that Muslims would be safe under such a union, which they would be denied under Hindutva. But clearly the problem was more complex. It was not just about exhorting the two biggest countries of the region with an emotional appeal to pare down their defence budgets so as to be able to spend more on education, health and other urgent needs of their peoples.
The question that troubled his listeners really had more to do with the fear of a union that didn’t in any basic way alter the picture for any of the countries, much less for their people. Imagine a pact, as one history lecturer observed at the end of Tariq Ali’s talk, with rightward leaning governments of South Asia, all fighting their versions of terrorism under American tutelage, would such a union not be tantamount to a veritable axis? The nightmarish prospect was too disconcerting to persist with the debate.
In other words, the fact that not much bonhomie exists in today’s circumstances between the states of South Asia, should be seen with considerable relief. For who would want Indian troops to be summoned to help Pakistani garrisons in Balochistan, or who would welcome Pakistani commandoes taking potshots at Naxalite insurgents in the heartland of India? Or who would want both the countries joining hands to bail out the authoritarian monarch of Nepal, as they seem so eager to do, in a bloody anti-Maoist operation?
So basically, any idea of a confederation of South Asian countries is viable if the member states first become reasonably agreeable democracies. At this point someone mentioned Arundhati Roy’s idea of a parallel parliament for India, which could be replicated at a South Asian level.
Roy had first presented the idea at a lecture in Aligarh in April 2004. She had appealed to India’s grassroots workers, struggling across the country, to unite. She had urged ‘single-issue’ resistance movements to become more involved with each other’s issues. “Many non-violent resistance movements fighting isolated, single-issue battles across the country have realized that their kind of special interest politics which had its time and place, is no longer enough. That they feel cornered and ineffectual is not good enough reason to abandon non-violent resistance as a strategy,” Roy declared.
In a way non-violent resistance had atrophied into feel-good political theatre, which at its most successful offered a photo opportunity for the media, and at its least successful, was simply ignored.
“The ‘Ngo’isation of civil society initiatives is taking us in exactly the opposite direction. It’s de-politicising us, making us dependent on aid and handouts. We need to re-imagine the meaning of civil disobedience,” Roy had appealed.
“Perhaps we need an elected shadow parliament outside the Lok Sabha, without whose support and affirmation parliament cannot easily function. A shadow parliament that keeps up an underground drumbeat, that shares intelligence and information (all of which is increasingly unavailable in the mainstream media).
“Fearlessly, but non-violently we must disable the working parts of this machine that is consuming us.” It is this parliament that could replicate itself in other countries of South Asia and then strike a bond with each other at the grassroots. Tariq Ali’s dream may yet be fulfilled. Roy was there to listen to him last week. Now it’s his turn to listen to her.
INDIA makes a big issue of dignitaries visiting Rajghat, a grassy knoll on the banks of the Jamuna where Mahatma Gandhi was cremated. It was just as well that President Musharraf had made it a point to visit the shrine to India’s Father of the Nation when he came here in July 2001.
No such ideas were imposed on King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia who was chief guest here at the January 26, Republic Day parade. As the Pioneer noted, absence of a mandatory visit to the Rajghat “has raised eyebrows and left people wondering as to what could have been the reason for his omission.” What the Pioneer did not say was that it would have caused many more eyebrows to be raised had the king decided to go to the shrine, an act severely forbidden in his faith.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
Elementary, my dear Watson?
Watson wrote:
I herewith submit some remarks on Mr Wilson’s suggestions as to the alteration in the system of education in the Punjab contained in his letter to the Rawalpindi division. I know little as yet both of the working of this system and of the Punjabi language which Mr Wilson wishes to substitute for Urdu in its curriculum, but I will put down some of the ideas that have occurred to me in the perusal of his note.
2. In the first place, does he not rather exaggerate the difference between Urdu and Punjabi? The difference appears to me to be mainly one of words; the construction of the sentences and the syntax in general is pretty nearly the same. In learning French one has to accustom oneself to new modes of expression and construction, not, it is true, so numerous or so difficult as would be found in learning Greek or Latin, but still enough to puzzle the beginner very considerably. In Punjabi, on the other hand, so far as my studies have gone, you can generally turn an Urdu sentence into Punjabi simply by substituting Punjabi words and inflections for the corresponding Urdu ones, and leaving the construction of the sentence as it was before. This is due of course to the fact that Punjabi is simply a dialectical variation of Hindi (the syntax of which is the same as that of Urdu) and is not a separate language. A priori therefore I cannot speak a posteriori. I should say that a Punjabi boy ought not to find it so very difficult to learn to speak Urdu as Mr Wilson would make out.
3. I would venture also to disagree with Mr Wilson’s remarks as to the Arabic character. The Arabic alphabet with a few Hindi and Persian letters added, has for long been the character adopted in written Urdu, and it seems to me to be admirably adapted for expressing the sounds of the various consonants and vowels. The fact that this character has so long been employed with success in Persian also is additional evidence to its suitability for a language in which there are so many Persian words.
It is not certainly suited for Punjabi in which there are several sounds which cannot adequately be represented by Arabic letters, but to say that you might as well represent English words in Hebrew characters as Hindi or Persian words in Arabic is surely an exaggeration. There are numerous words common to Urdu and Punjabi which can as well be represented by Arabic as by Gurmukhi letters.
If Punjabi be substituted for Urdu in the government schools. Mr Wilson urges the adoption of the Roman character in place of Gurmukhi or Nagri. I should have thought that the Roman character was very ill-adapted to express indigenous Punjabi words, more so even than the Arabic character, which in its ‘Aryanized’ form adequately express the sounds of some of the Hindi letters.
4. But granting that the Roman character is so far superior to the Gurmukhi or Nagri, would the change be so readily accepted as Mr Wilson contends? I should have thought that the Sikhs at any rate would strongly object if, as I understand, the Gurmukhi alphabet was invented, or rather adapted from the Nagri character, by their Chief Guru, and is the character in which the Granth is written. Mr Wilson thinks that a committee of European and native scholars might set up a standard Punjabi language which would come to be universally accepted throughout the province. He says that just as what is now modern English was originally one of many dialects, so a single Punjabi dialect could be easily adopted and developed till it became intelligible to all Punjabi speakers. But I am not sure that the analogy is correct. Modern English can hardly be said to have been originally a dialect. It is, I suppose, a conglomeration of words of Saxon or Latin origin, and it was not developed from one particular dialect, but was the language of the towns and centres of civilization, the original pure Saxon being considerably modified by an admixture of new words and phrases which intercourse with other nations brought into use. You do not call the language of Chaucer a dialect; his is a well of pure English undefiled and modern Queens English is its direct descendant. It represents the original stock and modern English dialects are its offshoots that branched off most of them long ago and still retain words and expressions formerly in use in another language, but now obsolete. Since the separation each has gone through many modifications, but the fact still remains that the one was originally contained in the other and was not, as Mr Wilson seems to hold, a joint offshoot of a higher stock.
5. In Punjabi the case is different. Here we have nothing but dialects, derived, mainly from Hindi, which is little spoken in the province; there is no one parent language which can be set up as a standard; it must be left to the committee of experts either to select one particular dialect and say “this shall be the universal standard”, or to make a selection from all the dialects and insist on that as the true and pure Punjabi language, - a task of very considerable difficulty. It is as if one were to try and establish a standard English language by taking the dialects of Northumberland, Norfolk, Cornwall. Somersetshire and London coster, and either saying, ‘The coster’s is the language of the future; any one who fails to drop his h’s or calls a donkey a moke is committing a solecism’, or else insisting on every one speaking and writing a language arbitrarily formed by a selection from all these dialects, and so neither fish, flesh, fowl nor good red herring. I know nothing of the various Punjabi dialects, but I imagine that a native of the extreme west of the Punjab would hardly be intelligible to a native of the extreme east, and to provide a language which would be acceptable as a standard to both would be no easy matter.
6. But granted such a language could be established would it be a satisfactory one and capable of fulfilling all the demands made upon it? A dialect has never a very extensive vocabulary; it has not many words for expressing abstract or complex ideas. It requires a long course of elaboration and development before it becomes a literary language. Urdu, with the help of Arabic and Persian, has far more capacities in it. If you have a standard language, it ought to be a good one and a suitable vehicle for all kinds of expression. In this case Mr Wilson wishes to substitute a language which is still in a comparatively rudimentary state and is spoken little by the educated classes for one which has reached a high stage of development, and is far better suited for expressing the technicalities of legal phraseology and abstract or complex ideas in general. It would be a very long time before Punjabi could attain to the elegance of Urdu, and it could only be done if at all, by a large importation of Arabic and Persian words which Mr Wilson desires as much as possible to exclude.
7. And lastly, even assuming that the teaching of Punjabi in government schools and the adoption of it in place of Urdu as the official language have all the advantages that Mr Wilson claims, would the change be worth the trouble? The transition would inevitably be extremely difficult. At present all the vernacular files are in Urdu; in future Mr Wilson would have them written in Punjabi and the Roman character. But, unless Mr Wilson would recommend having the old files rewritten in Punjabi—an immense labour—for many years to come native officials would have to know both Urdu and Punjabi, and in the schools there must be means of teaching both languages; else how could the administration be worked? When once an official language for records has been fixed on and in use for a long period, it is surely a doubtful policy to throw everything into confusion by the arbitrary substitution of a new language and character unless you can show overwhelming reasons for the adoption of the latter.
8. The chief advantage to be gained by such a course as Mr Wilson suggests would be that more children would be attracted to the government schools. On the other hand, I would urge that a child can find no very great difficulty in learning Urdu, that it will not be easy to set up any particular Punjabi dialect as a standard and get every one to conform thereto; that if you do succeed in setting up such a standard you will be substituting for a language that is comparatively highly developed and a suitable vehicle for expressing the technicalities of legal and other phraseologies a dialect that as such cannot be well adapted for use as an official language, and can only be made so by borrowing largely from foreign sources; that by adopting the Roman instead of the Arabic or Gurmukhi character you will not be making a change that will be any great improvement or very acceptable to any one except the English themselves; and finally, that the difficulties of the transition would be so numerous, the unnecessary expenditure of labour so great, and the period of confusion resulting therefrom so prolonged that even if there were no other objections to Mr Wilson’s proposals it would seem hardly worthwhile to carry them out at such a cost.