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Old Monday, May 16, 2011
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Default Four neglected crucial issues

Four neglected crucial issues
By
Inayatullah

Call it neglect, inefficiency or paralysis, as overwhelmingly important matters remain unattended or sidelined for months, if not years. Take the badly needed case of the supply of gas from Iran. Because of various factors – internal and external – the finalisation of the agreement with Iran was delayed for years. After the agreement was signed, it was expected that accelerated efforts would be made to implement it. However, little is known about the actual progress made and when it will be completed. Ironically enough, the Iranians have shown more interest and concern for the project than the Pakistan government. Is the weak and vulnerable government in Islamabad deliberately slowing down the process because of behind-the-scenes American pressure? Or is it just rank inefficiency? The silence or unconcern on the part of the opposition parties, too, is deplorable.

Water is crucial for the survival of our agriculture and for drinking purposes both for human beings and animals. Kalabagh Dam, essential as it is for the storage and generation of power, has been successfully placed in the cold storage – thanks to the irrational stand taken by Sindh and Balochistan. After long delays, hopes were pinned on Bhasha Dam. Reports appearing in the media, off and on, about initiating work in the area, have only served to create the general impression that instead of working on the project on a war footing – considering how desperately we need the construction of many more dams to cater to our essential needs – the pace of progress has been extremely slow. Whatever the initial hurdles or teething troubles, the government does not appear to have accorded the high priority that this vital work demanded. Why doesn’t the political opposition raise the issue in the National Assembly and the Senate?

More troubling, and in fact agonising, is the frightening prospect of the alienation of the people of the territorially largest province of Pakistan, Balochistan. No clear picture of what is going on this issue has been presented to us by the government, except for some administrative measures and references to a few steps taken under the so-called Aghaz-e-Haqooq-e-Balochistan package. The question is: Have the grievances of the “insurgents or separatists” been seriously considered and attended to? What indeed is the truth about the external (read India’s) involvement in the anti-state activities going on there? What was the content of the Pakistani accusations communicated to India at Sharm El Sheikh when the Indian and Pakistani Prime Ministers met?

While the federal government’s initiative about the restoration of the rights of the people of Balochistan has proved to be a damp squib, no real efforts appears to have been taken in hand to address the phenomenon of the disappearances of Balochis and the discovery of their dead bodies. The latest report of a student leader taken away and later killed has attracted attention at the national level. The government must come clear and clean about the bullet-ridden body of the former Chairman of the Baloch Students Organisation, who was abducted while on his way to Karachi. This latest case is bound to add fuel to the already burning fire of the Balochi rage. This, happening, weeks after the Judicial Commission had submitted its report speaks volumes about the way a crucial national issue is being tinkered with. The Commission had taken a serious notice of dozens of the cases of missing persons and the continuation of such disappearances. In fact, it had gone to the length of censoring the intelligence agencies for illegally detaining the persons involved. It is not known if compensation amounts have been paid to these people, as recommended by the Commission. Can we afford to continue this culpable neglect?

The performance of the political opposition here, too, has been disappointing. The PML-N does perk up in this connection off and on, and Nawaz Sharif did raise the issue once or twice, but no sustained effort has been made to pursue the matter seriously. It is time Parliament meets to focus on this issue for at least four days and presses the government to scrupulously and speedily implement its recommendations and directives.

I now come to a national concern, which I personally have been highlighting in some of my earlier columns. As stated in earlier writings, 60 million Pakistanis today are completely illiterate. In this age of knowledge and information technology, can a country, 50 percent of whose nationals cannot read the number of a bus, move ahead with time? Last year, the honourable Prime Minister declared the year 2010 as the National Literacy Year in a conference held in Peshawar. Since then little was done to implement the programme for the year; the Literacy Year was extended to 2011. A few million rupees were also earmarked for the activities to be undertaken.

So my latest enquiries about the programme for the year to be undertaken by the National Commission for Human Development, announced by the Prime Minister as the lead national literacy agency, indicate that despite reminders no money has so far been released to the Commission even though three months have already gone by. If this is the state of affairs in regard to the Prime Minister’s own, widely publicised, commitment, one can imagine the quantum of attention being paid to the national and regional literacy plans and programmes. No wonder, the latest Global Monitoring report relegates Pakistan to the category of a few countries, which will fail to achieve a single (of the six) Education for All (EFA) goals to which the Government of Pakistan committed itself at the World Education Forum held at Dakar.

The same goes for the Millennium Development Goals relating to education. With the enforcement of the provision of the 18th Amendment with education (and literacy) ceasing to be the central government’s responsibility, who will plan the literacy goals and monitor progress at the national level? In Balochistan and Sindh only a small fraction of the required number of literacy centres have been opened and there are little prospects of any substantial increase there. Left to them and their neglect of literacy, who will goad and guide them to bestir themselves and make rapid strides to catch up with the rest of the developing world?

Pakistan is one of the few countries where, while literacy is increasing at the rate of around one percent every year, the number of illiterates, at the same time, is going up. In 1951, the number of illiterate females for instance was 9 million. Today, it is nearing 40 million. In 1949, India, China and Pakistan had more or less similar literacy rates ranging from 14 to 17. Today, India is around 70 percent, China 99 percent, while Pakistan claims to be 56 percent literate with almost half of the population incapable of reading and writing. Again will the political opposition take up this severely neglected issue and make the government realise its inescapable responsibility mandated by the Constitution of Pakistan to eliminate illiteracy in the shortest possible time. Please, dear opposition, wake up the governments, at the centre and in the provinces, to move rapidly in this neglected field.

The writer is a political and international relations analyst.
Email: pacadepak@gmail.com
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