Unnecessary burden
WHEN it comes to children, especially their education, our attitudes seem to be incredibly regressive. For example, it is not unusual in Pakistan’s cities and towns — as in many other countries — to see little boys and girls lugging around oversized school bags that are obviously much heavier than what they should be carrying. While some schools ask parents to purchase stationary and books and deposit them at school, not all institutions follow this practice, which means children have to trudge to and fro every day with an unnecessary burden on their backs. But the Indian state of Maharashtra has taken a progressive step to address this issue. As reported on Saturday, the state government has passed a resolution which says that children will not be allowed to carry bags that exceed 10pc of their body weight. As a local education official pointed out, youngsters were carrying loads that were 20pc to 30pc of their weight. This, he observed, was harmful to the children’s health and caused “stress and fatigue”.
Perhaps similar steps are needed to lighten the load of Pakistan’s schoolchildren. The 10pc-of-body-weight rule is a standard backed by health professionals, hence provincial education departments need to look into ways to discourage the carrying of heavy bags. Both schools and parents have a responsibility. Educational institutions — both public and private — must ensure kids are not made to bring unnecessary books or stationary every day, while parents should also monitor the weight of their children’s bags. Lockers and drawers should be used within schoolhouses to store books while in the digital age, technology-led solutions must be employed to impart lessons and reduce the physical load children have to carry. Overall our attitudes towards educating children — and their safety — are uncaring. For instance, look at the way we stuff children inside overcrowded and rickety school vans. Reducing the weight of school bags can be one small step in making the educational process more enjoyable and less of an ordeal for the younger generation.
Turkey’s shift
THIS newspaper has argued that to defeat the self-styled Islamic State, regional powers must combine forces in order to dislodge the extremist outfit from the territory it has occupied in Syria and Iraq, and to bring its leaders and fighters to justice. The fact that Turkey has decided to take a more active role where countering IS is concerned may be a major step towards realising this goal. On Friday, Turkish jets reportedly targeted IS positions inside Syria, killing a number of militants. It is likely the strikes were motivated by the recent deadly suicide bombing in the Turkish town of Suruc on the Syrian border; over 30 mostly Kurdish civilians were killed in that atrocity, which Ankara believes was carried out by a bomber with IS links. Along with the air strikes, Turkey has also given the US-led coalition access to its airbases in order to target the extremist group, while police have also launched swoops inside the country, picking up hundreds of suspects believed to have sympathies for the ‘caliphate’.
Though Ankara’s change of heart has come late in the day, it is nonetheless welcome. After all, media reports have suggested that “thousands” of foreign “volunteers” have made their way to the battlefields of Syria via Turkey, while IS and al-Nusra fighters have also allegedly taken refuge on Turkish soil. While officially the Recep Erdogan-led government opposes IS, it also has no love lost for the Assad regime, which is why it has been accused of looking the other way as extremists use its territory to dislodge the Damascus government. But supporting or even ignoring the activities of militant groups can have adverse effects, particularly for Turkey’s internal security, as the Suruc bombing has painfully illustrated. That is why all regional states must review their policies and stop any support for extremist groups. At the same time, world powers must work towards bringing about a negotiated settlement to the Syrian civil war, which is now in its fifth year and has cost over 200,000 lives. Similarly, the government in Baghdad must be supported by regional players in its fight against IS. It is clear that should countries of the region ignore the IS threat and continue to fight proxy wars against each other, the security situation in the Middle East will become increasingly precarious. Should Turkey — a Nato member — take a firm stand, its anti-IS campaign could be a game-changer.
More flooding lessons
ONE more time the monsoon season finds us struggling to cope with widespread inundation, flooding and the attendant destruction of infrastructure and livelihoods. Although the scale of the devastation does not compare with what previous monsoon seasons have left behind, it is important to keep in mind that the rainy season has just begun. What is already apparent is the proliferation of threats that the climate presents. Previous monsoon seasons have seen large-scale flooding from overflowing rivers as well as breaches in the embankments. In 2010 there were serious fears that the barrages on the main stem of the Indus river could be swept away, something that thankfully did not happen. This year we add Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (Glof) to the list.
It is not clear yet how many Glof events occurred in Chitral, and what triggered them. Reports from the ground deny that Glof events created the floods, pointing instead towards rains as the trigger. They point out that the most heavily impacted region has no glaciers nearby. The Provincial Disaster Management Authority of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, in its situation reports, first reported that the floods were caused by Glof events, then later added torrential rains from a cloudburst to the causes too. In any case, what is clear is that the Met department failed to issue any kind of an alert. If the flooding was caused entirely by a series of large-scale, simultaneously occurring Glof events, then the Met department would be largely powerless to forecast. But if the rains served as a trigger for the Glof events, and the timing would suggest it did, then an alert should have been issued.
According to KP government authorities, the Met department is not equipped to issue proper forecasts for the mountainous regions, and all of KP province does not have any functioning weather radars. This is a dangerous situation because the mountains are particularly vulnerable to the vagaries of the weather, and water run-off from the mountains will always find its way into the rivers, just like it did in 2010. The past five years have taught us that the monsoon season is turning into a dangerous season, and only luck has ensured that thus far no major breaches of large hydrological infrastructure have occurred. Not only that, the nature of the threat is also multiplying. The many emergencies arising out of a changing climate are now knocking at our door with increasing ferocity. It is high time to realise that meeting this challenge is a critical priority. Investment needs to be made in upgrading forecasting capabilities, building on our current capability which relies almost exclusively on empirically observing weather patterns towards forecasts that use climatic models, and thereby providing longer lead times. We cannot afford to drive blind into the coming storms.
Source: Editorial
Published in Dawn, July 26th, 2015