Dams, Plan ‘B’
August 20, 2012
That we were in desperate need of more dams was self-evident 30 years ago. The only reason we do not have the dams that we knew we needed is the serial incompetence of successive federal and provincial governments. The Bhasha Dam, which has been touted as a panacea for many of our ills in the power sector, has now run into trouble so deep and complex, with donors disappearing with frightening rapidity, that Wapda have come up with ‘Plan B’. Allegedly. It plans to raise the $3bn to fund further construction by mortgaging its assets – the Tarbela, Mangla and Ghazi Barotha power complexes. Wapda claims that it is determined to complete the project without the help of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) or the World Bank (WB). Reading between the lines of the statement by Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Dr Nadeemul Haq one realises that Plan B is at the conceptual rather than the implementation stage – in other words, there is no final ‘Plan B’, merely an acknowledgement that it is about time we had one.
The key question that needs to be asked from the Planning Commission is: why were they sleeping? And why did they not have a contingency Plan-B ready, just in case the original plan failed? Dr Nadeemul Haq tells us that there has been a meeting to discuss the matter and Plan B needs further refinement and Wapda was going to contact ‘financial experts to finalise the financial plan for the project.’ Why, if we may ask, has this not already been done? Note that his words are all couched in the future tense, indicating that Plan B is still at the back-of-an-envelope stage. Further, he did little to encourage confidence in Plan B by saying that mortgaging Wapda assets was ‘not so simple keeping in view the current global sentiments about Pakistan ’. In other words who would want to buy futures in a trio of clapped-out dams that any financial analyst worth their salt would consider past their sell-by date anyway? Tenuous as it is, any plan is better than no plan and it is to be finalised within six months. Simply put, we cannot afford that this project fails. But there are a range of ‘if’s’ before it that must be satisfied before it is fully secure.
Children abused
August 20, 2012
For a society that sets such store by children, we are remarkably careless about their welfare and safety. A report published by the Madadgar National Helpline makes truly shocking reading, and is a shameful indictment of the authorities and families in failing to protect children. The primary responsibility for the protection of all children falls on the family and not the state, and the family appears to be the nodal point for the abuse of children. In the first six months of 2012, there were 2,331 cases of reported violence against minors, incidents which happened in every province. Forced marriage, rape, sodomy, honour killing and torture all feature. As do cases where minors committed suicide, or were trafficked or fell victim to the odious practice of Vani. Minors are kidnapped for ransom or revenge and 367 have been murdered for a range of reasons.
Punjab leads nationally with 1,059 cases, 687 from Sindh, 382 from KP and 203 from Balochistan. Although these figures are in themselves shocking they represent the tip of a much larger iceberg of abuse. Children everywhere are being abused sexually and their civil rights as individuals trampled upon. Pernicious cultural practices ‘allow’ the abuse to continue unchecked and encourage rather than discourage appalling acts against children. There is little or no child protection legislation and only Punjab has government-funded child protection offices staffed by qualified but under-resourced social workers. Children are abused in their schools, the madrassas, the workplace and, primarily, in their homes by the very people on whom the primary duty to protect devolves – their parents. The Madadgar report concludes by saying that...’the authorities in Pakistan seem unwilling or unable to protect children from abuse and bring the perpetrators to justice, which promotes a culture of violence through the impunity granted to the criminals.’ Those 34 words are an indictment for a set of crimes for which we bear collective responsibility. This is not the work of some ‘hidden hand.’ It is the work of the hands of the people of Pakistan. Surely we can do better than this?
Educational mess
August 20, 2012
Our education system is in a quagmire so deep it seems difficult to understand how we can ever step out of it and move towards a brighter future. Education is, of course, the first rung on which we need to step to achieve progress and prosperity but it seems even the ladder is not propped up yet. A recent study by the NGO Strengthening Participatory Organisation notes that Pakistan has one of the most stratified education systems in the world, with about eight different kinds of institutions functioning in the country. These range from government schools to elite private institutes offering ‘O’ and ‘A’ level education. We also have madrassahs, cadet colleges, Urdu and English-medium private schools, schools run under the Aga Khan Board and public and private sector colleges. The SPO study points out that these differences create divides rather than unification in society. We are, of course, all familiar with the manner in which different schools are graded in social terms. Moreover, there is little regulation of either private schools or madrassahs, and this adds to the problems with some 6,000 registered and 4,000 unregistered private schools running in Karachi alone. The SPO survey also noted the dismal standards at government schools, with grade level students unable to construct simple sentences or solve basic maths problems.
But these are not the only problems Pakistan faces as far as its education sector goes. During the current fiscal year, while Pakistan decreased its spending on higher education by Rs10 billion, India expanded its higher education budget five-fold. In India, more than 1,000 billion rupees was allocated for higher education for the year 2012-13. This is 40 times more than what Pakistan spends on education. Higher education enrolment in India is 18 percent as compared to a dismal eight percent in Pakistan where few make it past a badly flawed primary and secondary structure. Experts also point out India invests far more in research, creating far higher standards as far as education goes. The depths to which we have sunk in the educational sphere is something to think about very deeply. We have a pile of problems facing us. Somehow this pile needs to be cleared and sorted out.