Our own battle

PAKISTAN needs little prodding from outside to fight terrorism today. It is heartening to note that as leaders of the country’s two most popular parties and coalition partners in the next government, Mr Asif Ali Zardari and Mr Nawaz Sharif have some understanding between them on tackling the growing scourge. In separate interviews to an American newspaper both seem to agree that the policy adopted by President Musharraf since 2002 has to be revamped, and terrorism must be confronted as Pakistan’s own battle, not just as a proxy war at the behest of the US. This is precisely the factor that has been missing from the equation Gen Musharraf struck with the Americans after 9/11. Growing extremism in Pakistan and the militancy the country faces today pose a serious threat to its internal security, democratic institutions and the way of life held so dear by a majority of our peace-loving and tolerant people. That the top two leaders are willing to engage with the tribal elders, some of whom may be harbouring the militants who in turn are accused of staging attacks on Afghan and Nato forces across the Durand Line, should not be seen as soft-pedalling the issue. The Americans must know that Pakistanis, too, have borne the brunt of their right or wrong policies. Unless Islamabad fights terrorism as its own battle and as the elected government deems fit, raining bombs on tribal areas will not root out the problem but compound it, especially if innocent civilians keep falling victim to such strikes. The American strategy has failed in Afghanistan and Iraq; it will not work in Pakistan.

There can be no question of offering the militants a fig leaf without stringent conditions attached, and credible guarantees sought from the interlocutors involved, if at all. This simply cannot happen at a time when Pakistanis, in our cities and in the countryside, are at the receiving end of the extremist militants’ killing spree: some 274 lives have been lost in terrorist bombings and suicide attacks inside Pakistan this year alone. It would be wrong for American officials or analysts to draw hurried conclusions from what Mr Zardari and Mr Sharif had to say about a democratic Pakistan government relinquishing its role of an active partner in the global war against terrorism. They must understand that unlike President Musharraf’s quasi-democratic regime in office over the past years, the incoming government is backed by a genuine mandate given to it by the people. Hence it enjoys public support that it can count on to contain terrorism more effectively — and decisively.

The KESC anomaly

AS pointed out at an official meeting last week, the payment-default crisis — whether labelled as circular debt or simply debt — enveloping the privatised KESC, Pepco, PSO and the customers has certainly compounded problems for the power-scarce city of Karachi. But more than the repeated reiteration of a well-known fact what is needed urgently is a practical solution. Besides, Karachi needs a first-rate cost-efficient and demand-sensitive power utility supported by a fail-safe transmission and distribution system plus a highly sophisticated and efficient billing agency. All this would cost a lot of money, and if taken in hand today and implemented on a war footing it would take at least three years for this dream project to come on stream. That is why the incoming government will be well advised to put power problems in Karachi at the top of its economic agenda because being the only in-operation port city of the country this is where, in this age of high fuel costs, it would find itself concentrating most of its industrial, commercial and business ventures. Also, this is where most of its foreign direct investment would be flowing because of Karachi’s relatively better social and physical infrastructure and its supply of skilled manpower.

The best way to privatise any loss-making public enterprise is to sell it on an ‘as is where is’ basis even if it means selling it at a throwaway price. But never ever should it be sold to a party which does not have the professional, technical and management skills to run it, no matter how burdensome it has become for the seller’s budget. This aspect was woefully ignored while privatising the KESC. The utility was sold to a group that had no previous experience of being in similar business. The foreign buyer, under the name of KES Power Ltd, a company incorporated in Caymen Islands, comprises 60 per cent shares by Al-Jomaih Holding Co and 40 per cent by National Industries Holding of Kuwait through its subsidiary Denham Investment Ltd created in 2005 especially for the purpose. The group engaged Siemens of Germany as operations and maintenance (O&M) contractor to the KESC. As is well known, Siemens are only the manufacturers and suppliers of power-generation equipment, and have no O&M contracting experience in the area. Siemens are out now but the inexperienced owners are still there and the KESC is now being managed by a retired general with no experience of running a power utility. In the larger economic interest of the country, this anomaly needs to be corrected at the earliest by mobilising the needed funds and the appropriate manpower.

Campus insecurity

AS bomb blasts become a regular feature of city life in Pakistan, citizens are being forced to get accustomed to living with the perpetual threat of death and injuries that these explosions bring in their wake. Another distressing aspect is the widening range of targets and the fear this instils in people. The impact this has on the lives of people was demonstrated by the recent bomb hoaxes in some schools in Karachi and Lahore. For parents, the prospect of their children being targeted is a frightening one. Equally worrying is a situation when a school receives a bomb threat and there is no way of knowing if it is real or a hoax. Given their responsibility vis-à-vis their students, schools cannot ignore a threat. Hence the need for all schools to be prepared for such eventualities.

The most sensible approach would be for all schools to draw up an evacuation plan for emergencies. These should include not just bomb scares but also fires and natural calamities that call for urgent measures. Schools could draw up safety evacuation plans in consultation with one another and the education department. The idea should not be to spread panic and alarm the children, but to train them how to act in an emergency if they are required to evacuate the school building. This would entail holding regular exercises — but they should be unannounced and spontaneous. Thus children will accept them as normal school routine as civil defence drills were in schools of yore. It is unfortunate that, for the most part, there is no concept of school safety, and most educational institutions do not even have regular fire drills, let alone bomb drills. In the case of any disaster, one can imagine how difficult it would be to evacuate the children and school staff in the panic that would ensue if there are no guidelines about the measures to be taken. As violence increases in the country, it is only right that all citizens — both children and adults —be made aware of the dangerous times in which we live and be instructed on how to cope with threatening situations.

Politics of discourse

LANGUAGE is no longer considered a passive tool of communication that is neutral in nature. But there was a time when language was viewed as just that. It was seen to be a means of conveying one’s message. The study of language was done in isolation as if it had nothing to do with society.

It was Saussure, a Swiss linguist, who introduced the two useful terms langue and parole to describe the two aspects of language and reinterpret the phenomenon of language.

Langue denotes rules and regulations while parole refers to the actual use of language. This division of usage and use encouraged other linguists to explore the sociocultural dimensions of language. Further important research that changed the course of language study was carried out by Sapir-Whorf. The study known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis completely changed the popular view about the nature and functions of language. It suggested that language is not just a reflection of what happens in society. We perceive the outer world with the help of our minds which are largely controlled by our language.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis challenged the conventional belief that language is a passive and neutral tool. It put forward the thesis that language itself is involved in the construction of social reality. This thesis also suggested that the function of language is not just reflection or communication of what is happening outside but also construction and perpetuation of social reality.

This central position of language, in terms of construction of social reality, raises some important questions. Some of these questions include: What is discourse? What is the interrelationship of discourse and social order? How is discourse linked with power and politics? How is it engaged in construction of social reality? How is it used to hegemonise marginalised groups? How can discourse be used to put up resistance?

In order to understand these questions we need to understand the notion of discourse which came under the spotlight with the work of French social thinker Michel Foucault whose notion of knowledge and power relies heavily on discourse.

The term discourse, like many other elusive concepts, can be interpreted at different levels. One oversimplified definition describes it as “written or oral text”. But this neutral definition of language is incomplete and misleading. Discourse acquired new meanings when Foucault propounded his famous theory of knowledge and power.

According to Foucault, discourse is “ways of representing aspects of the world — the processes, relations and structures of the material world, the ‘mental world’ of thoughts, feelings, beliefs and so forth, and the social world.”

This new interpretation of discourse helped others to revisit the term, realise its significant role in the construction of social reality and consider it a socio-political phenomenon. One can now find a more holistic definition of discourse in dictionaries. For instance, a reference dictionary defines discourse as “a mode of organising knowledge, ideas, or experience that is rooted in language and its concrete contexts (as history or institutions)”.

Foucault identifies a nexus of power, discourse and knowledge. The relationship of power and knowledge is important to understand. Power generally has the requisite resources (grip on institutions) for creating the discourses required to construct targeted realities. The constructed knowledge/social reality justifies all the actions of power and condemns those who do not believe in it. With the help of discourse, marginalised groups are represented by the dominant groups with their biases. Certain truths, facts and ideologies are created with the help of discourse, and people, ideas and objects are evaluated and judged in the light of these truths, facts and ideologies.

The relationship between the powerful and the powerless, according to Foucault, is not fixed. A group which may be powerful at one point in history can become powerless at another. A recent example are the Afghan ‘mujahideen’ who were once treated by the American administration as heroes but are now considered terrorists.

The same jihad which was acclaimed as a holy war of liberation and was supported in terms of money, weapons, training, manpower and moral support is now seen as terrorism in a world where ‘war on terror’ is the slogan of the day. The only difference between then and now is that those who were fighting against Russia are now fighting the US. Interestingly, discourses then and now were coined by the same power for two competing effects.

The term discourse came into focus again in the work of Norman Fairclough who pioneered and popularised critical discourse analysis (CDA). Fairclough describes discourse as “ways of seeing and representing the world” and defines it as “language as social practice determined by social structures”. According to him, discourse “involves social conditions which can be specified as social conditions of production, and social conditions of interpretations.”

In almost all imperialistic adventures, language and certain kinds of discourse were used as potent tools of control. It is important to note how discourses of the powerful become the model to follow and a standard for others.

Anyone deviating from these standards is dubbed substandard. All this is done in an apparently innocent and objective manner. Dominant groups make use of the discursive approach to hegemonise marginalised groups. Detailed discussions on this topic can be found in Edward Said’s Orientalism and Robert Phillipson’s Linguistic Imperialism.

How can discourse be used to put up resistance against dominant groups? For that it is important that we include in our curriculums the critical study of language that exposes students to the socio-political use of language. This exposure is crucial. As Christopher Candlin suggests, “an understanding of the social order is most conveniently and naturally achieved through a critical awareness of the power of language.” The need to study language from a critical perspective is also underlined by Alastair Pennycook who suggests that “Discourse is not only a form of knowledge about cultural ways of thinking but also a form of practice (an event)”. Understanding the dynamics of power, discourse and knowledge is a prerequisite to using language as a means of resistance.

The balance of power can be disturbed by reversing the discourse. We have seen such examples of discourse reversal in the feminist movement. The reversal of discourse on the one hand challenges some created truths, facts, common sense and ideologies, and on the other offers alternative truths and facts.

A. Suresh Canagarajah in his seminal book Resisting Linguistic Imperialism in English Teaching suggests that “Discourse is the linguistic realization of the social construct ideology.” So if we want to use education for emancipation, freedom, and development we need to challenge some of the stereotypes, common-sense social practices and ideologies. This can only be done with the help of a critical insight into the potential role of language in creating, maintaining and challenging hegemonic practices.

The writer is director, Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore School of Economics, and author of Rethinking Education in Pakistan.

shahidksiddiqui@yahoo.com

OTHER VOICES - North American Press

Turkey’s democracy on trial

The New York Times

THE lawsuit filed by one of Turkey’s top prosecutors last week, asking the country’s Constitutional Court to shut down its largest political party, gravely threatens political and economic stability and Ankara’s international reputation.

It accuses the governing Justice and Development Party of ‘anti-secular activities’, and also asks the court to ban 71 of the party’s members from politics for five years, including the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the president, Abdullah Gul. The court, which must now decide whether to hear the lawsuit, should turn it down. And Turkey’s parliament should repeal the undemocratic law.

The prosecution claims to be defending the forward-looking values of modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. In fact, it degrades those values. Intolerance and contempt for democracy have increasingly characterised the way Turkey’s old-guard political establishment has responded to the rise of a modern, Western-oriented and democratic political party rooted in the country’s majority-Muslim faith….

But the deeper problem is a set of rigidly ideological laws that allow selective prosecutions in the name of broadly defined abstractions like ‘secularism’ and ‘Turkishness’.

The Justice and Development Party has been a distressingly frequent target. It has already had to overcome a legal ban on Mr Erdogan becoming prime minister, military coup threats and an unsuccessful attempt to prevent parliament from electing Mr Gul as president. These desperate manoeuvres have only increased the party’s electoral support….

Laws like this are an embarrassment and a danger to Turkey’s modern, democratic society, which has outgrown them. The Justice and Development Party should use its parliamentary majority to repeal them, and those secular party representatives who truly believe in democracy should support the effort. — (March 21)

Poverty steps just a start

The Toronto Star

PREMIER Dalton McGuinty has made a good down payment on a promised poverty reduction strategy for Ontario with his announcement that close to $300m in next week’s provincial budget will be allocated for programmes to help low-income children and families.

The measures include $135m to provide dental care to ‘working poor’ families and the extension of an emergency dental programme for low-income children to take them up to the age of 18. The move will help to eliminate the ‘welfare wall’ that traps many people on social assistance because they lose their benefits when they take a job.

McGuinty’s government will also provide $100m this year to repair 4,000 provincial affordable housing units … While that is a start, Toronto alone needs $300m to repair its crumbling stock of public housing units … In addition to the direct funding, McGuinty announced that municipalities will be able to get up to $500m in low-cost loans to repair up to 20,000 affordable housing units.

The Liberal government will also spend $32m over three years to expand the student nutrition programme so that every student in Ontario will have access to good, healthy meals and snacks, a move that could help deal with the growing problem of childhood obesity.

The focus on measures to fight poverty is welcome news to social policy advocates, who have been struggling for years to call attention to the plight of more than one million Ontarians living in poverty.

And while the advocates are generally supportive of McGuinty’s initiative, they also hope it is just the first step toward a comprehensive strategy on poverty.

… McGuinty is taking what he himself is calling “early steps” to tackle the poverty file, rather than wait for a comprehensive plan to be finalised.

Anti-poverty advocates, including the Star, will hold him to his word…. — (March 20)