DAWN - Cowasjee Corner; 15 November, 1998
No nous
Ardeshir Cowasjee
GOVERNOR'S rule has been imposed upon our province, and the governor's hands duly tied behind his back. Unsuitable senior officers have been foisted upon him by the federal government, without even seeking his advice or obtaining his consent.
Really bad news is that Jam Sadiq Ali's notorious principal henchman, Imtiaz Shaikh, who was suspended on the charge of corruption by the succeeding government, is attempting another comeback. He has been trying since the day Liaquat Jatoi was sworn in as chief minister, when Imtiaz drove him to the Governor's House. Currently, he is being pushed by the prime minister's information Minister, Mushahid saab, and by the PM's Karachi host, Senator Majid Sultan, to be slotted in as the Sindh information secretary. The governor is resisting.
Now to the subject at hand - education. A young man sent his bio-data - impressive, well presented. He had studied at one of Karachi's leading old-established schools, obtained seven 'A' grades in his 'O' Levels and had managed to get admission into a university in the US. His father had been saving up to send him abroad, but his foreign exchange account had been frozen by Nawaz Sharif. He applied to our family Foundation for a scholarship.
Worth helping, we decided, and called him for an interview. He arrived, extended his hand, and said "Hello, Ardeshir." "How old are you?" I asked. "Eighteen," came the reply. When I informed him that I was four times his age, he failed to get the point and looked at me blankly.
His general knowledge was abysmal. Who was Ferdinand de Lesseps, I asked. He had never heard of him. I then asked him where the Suez Canal is located. His response was to inform me that geography was not one of his subjects. Next, I tried the Panama Canal. In Cuba, he announced with pride.
At that stage I felt sorry for the parents. I had talked to his father - well spoken, well educated, who had three growing sons to put through college. Because the father deserved to be helped, the boy was given a grant. We asked ourselves what exactly it is that education in a good school and the passing of exams had done for him. Perhaps he is possessed of a mind that does not question, but hopefully it will develop in a better environment.
What about all the poor young men, perhaps with enquiring minds, perhaps who are keen to learn across the broader path? They have no chance, they are given no opportunity. The Government of Pakistan spends little or nothing on education, which is a subject that is near to last on its priority listing. Any man appointed to the education ministry or departments, or given an education portfolio considers that he is being punished (except perhaps the astounding Ghous Ali Shah). It is a subject of no interest to our parliamentarians or the millions of sycophants who pay court to them.
It is not the letters, which follow a name that denote that a person is educated, or necessarily the institutions, which they have attended. Take one of our recent Prime ministers who can boast of having been to Radcliffe and to Oxford. Was she educated in the true sense of the word? And her brother, a Harvard man - could anyone in his right mind refer to him as having been educated? It is also doubtful whether, in view of his track record, our last president, manor-born and an Oxford man with letters after his name, could be deemed educated. How can an educated man knowingly collude with a bank robber, shamelessly deplete his poor country's exchequer, and misuse his presidential position to retrieve some 29,000 acres of land which he had surrendered to the state land reform commission 26 years earlier? Can we say that those who make an industry of robbing the people are educated?
On to a Rhodes Scholar, Shahid Javed Burki of the World Bank. Having lived outside Pakistan for the past 31 years, he has managed to retain his sense of balance. At the convocation last Sunday of the Institute of Business Administration at Korangi Creek, he spoke, with regret, on the crumbling state of Pakistan and on the deep crisis in which we find ourselves. The thrust of his address was the dearth of education and the need for the building of institutions, two of our weakest sectors.
From experience of dealing with development in various countries, he told us: "When people lose hope in the ability of the state to provide the services they expect of it, they step forward and fill the gap themselves. Bangladesh is the most recent example of the working of this phenomenon. Some of the non-governmental organizations in Bangladesh are now as important as the institutions of the state. Some of the remarkable social improvements that have taken place there in the areas of health, education and family planning were the consequences of the work undertaken by non-governmental organizations. Perhaps the best example of the positive impact of their work is in the area of demography. In the sixteen-year period between 1980 and 1996, the fertility in Bangladesh declined by 44 per cent; from 6.1 births per woman to 3.4. Consequently, the rate of population increase has declined by a third, from an average of 2.4 per cent between 1980-90 to 1.6 per cent between 1990-97.
"Compared to Bangladesh Pakistan has done badly. Whilst its total fertility rate has dropped by 27 per cent, from 7.0 in 1980 to 5.1 in 1996, it remains one of the highest in the world. A high fertility rate produces a rate of population growth that Pakistan does not have the space or the resources to sustain over time. At 2.9 per cent per year [the questionable official figure], the growth rate of Pakistan's population is 81 per cent higher than in Bangladesh."
Bangladesh has spent far more of its limited funds than Pakistan on education, with particular emphasis on the education of women, without which the population growth cannot decline. It knows what it is doing; it knows where it wants to go.
To quote Shahid again, "It is indeed a matter of great regret that administration after administration in Pakistan has paid such little attention to educating the country's women. A society that condemns its women to backwardness is choosing backwardness for itself."
Burki and the rest of us must remind our failing governments of such facts over and over again. They must be repeated time and again, even though our words may fall on deaf ears and even though the people can expect little or no help from the governments such as ours in the education of their children or, as things are going, of their children's children.
Education of the masses at the hands of this government is at its lowest ebb, hopeless. But there is good news on the private sector front.
A group of citizens of Karachi have formed The Citizens' Foundation (TCF) with the principal aim of educating the poor. They were fortunate and found themselves an able organizer in General Sabeeh Qamar uz Zaman, their chief executive officer.
Sabeeh, as chairman of the Steel Mill (1992-1994), was the first to detect a ghost labour force of some 3,000 men. He sacked them. When the Mill started to produce steel in 1982-83, that year it produced 32,000 tons. In 1993-94 Sabeeh managed to cross the million-ton mark, the mill producing 1,044,000 tons utilizing its capacity (on the ground and not merely on paper) to the extent of 95 per cent. Naturally, he had to go. The fact that Benazir Bhutto, Asif Zardari and Naheed Khan wanted him sacked add to his stature. Allegations cooked up against him on questionable grounds remain unsubstantiated.
In the short space of two years, TCF has built and equipped and now operates 25 primary schools on the outskirts of Karachi and Lahore, and a further nine are in various stages of completion. Encouraged by this success, our family Foundation also joined in and has committed funds for a high school in the slums of the Machhar area of Lyari. The school will accommodate eight hundred children and, as with all the TCF schools, 85 per cent of the children will pay nominal fees ranging between Rs.5 and Rs.50 per month. Last month we had the ground-breaking ceremony - a happy day for our family - when Cyrus, aged three, my brother Cyrus's grandson, broke the ground with his spade. Plinth level has already been reached.
To all the e-mailers who ask me what they can do to help this country, where they should invest, my answer is: Education. The return will be priceless.
The TCF website: http://www.citizensfoundation.com. Please visit it. The e-mail address : citizens@cyber.net.pk