Madressah reform
THE government has been going around in circles where madressah reform is concerned. Its weak attempt at getting these religious schools to agree to uniform control by the state bore little fruit, and the emphasis is now on another old favourite of the authorities: curriculum reform. On Friday, the federal minister for religious affairs stressed the necessity of educational standards at seminaries matching mainstream trends, but there has been little discussion on how to implement such recommendations. This, more or less, sums up the government’s indecision regarding the subject of madressahs.
It is a case of officials not wanting to take the risks entailed. Like the Musharraf regime and the PPP set-up before it, the PML-N government has been reluctant, to the point of being afraid, to deal with the problem. Even though the NAP consensus was expected to empower the PML-N to undertake reform, the campaign to do so has been helter-skelter. There have been several slogans and words about the need to upgrade the seminaries and about the basic principle of streamlining the sources of their finances and ideally creating a system where the state itself allocates the funds. And the talk about curriculum reform has been unending. Nevertheless, there has been growing realisation in this debate that madressahs are not simply the result of the failure of the ‘secular’ education system. Growing conservatism in society is a big factor in the mushrooming of madressahs across the country.
There have been so many assessments of the reasons why the reform campaign has failed to take off. Let us add to it a fundamental assertion. Pakistan is still some distance away from understanding a basic fact about these religious schools. The country seeks to deal with — albeit half-heartedly — the seminaries through the five boards that represent five schools of thought or sects in Islam. What is still not accepted is that underneath there are so many divisions. There are a large number of seminaries that work as satellites without any outside control and aided by their own sources of finances. They consider themselves as not answerable administratively to the board they might be linked to in theory on the basis of schools or sects. This is against the old norm where seminaries belonging to a school of thought or sect would be under the administrative influence of an order or individual. Authorities wanting change will have to find a direct route to the madressah down the road before it can be brought under a chain of command. As far as the question of sources of funding for the madressahs is concerned, there is no group more capable of keeping an eye on this and on seminaries in general than the state’s own people at the grass roots: the local governments.
Stock exchange sale
AT long last the process of making Pakistan’s stock exchange independent of the powers of the broker community is reaching fruition. With the sale of a strategic stake in the newly created Pakistan Stock Exchange to a Chinese consortium, the country’s capital markets could well receive the boost that the fundamentals merit. A lot depends on how well the new investor can manage the peculiarities of the PSX. There are grounds to be confident though, since the consortium brings plenty of experience to the position, and the stock market here is not particularly complex or diversified. That gives the new investor much room to introduce and prioritise new products and deepen trading. A futures market would be one related development.
With the power of the broker community dwindling further now, the front-line regulator should also take a more aggressive stance with regard to malpractices and the enforcement of rules. Many companies are habitually late in filing their financial results but suffer little to no penalty. Also, there have been a number of cases where bogus companies have been allowed to float an IPO. Many other companies that have ceased to exist continue being traded. And, of course, that ultimate bugbear of the stock market — manipulative trading, where share prices are artificially inflated through pump-and-dump schemes. There is a wide area where the PSX needs to strengthen its performance before the real potential of the country’s stock market can be unlocked. With the arrival of the new consortium, we will now see if the original vision behind the road to demutualisation will bring in the benefits that it promised at the outset. In addition to the stock market, the commodity exchange needs to be deepened as well. Considering Pakistan is a large wheat-growing country, there is massive scope for a commodity exchange to flourish. Thus far, widespread rackets in the agricultural sector have pre-empted this, and the commodity sector remains largely informal as a result. The new consortium in the stock exchange has its work cut out for it, but if it takes its responsibilities seriously and succeeds in curbing the kinds of practices that have given the stock market a bad name in the past, it could yet deliver a measurable boost to the economy. Perhaps we might actually see the day when the stock is used to raise capital for investment as well.
Xmas peace train
CHRISTMAS cheer got a head start this year. The Christmas Peace Train, launched by the government as a gesture of solidarity with Pakistani Christians to mark their most important religious festival, departed from Islamabad on Thursday on a 15-day countrywide tour. It arrived in Peshawar the next day carrying some 60 Christians, and is scheduled to reach Karachi on Dec 31. The festive carriages are painted red and decorated with Christmas imagery and there is, of course, the obligatory Santa on board. Described as the first train launched in South Asia as a part of Christmas celebrations, the initiative is a joint venture of the railways and human rights ministries. During its journey to Karachi, the train will stop at various places in Punjab and Sindh and offer a chance for locals to interact with the passengers.
In a country with a far from stellar record of religious tolerance, the Christmas Peace Train is deserving of appreciation. Ironically, the considerable police presence around the train, as seen in the media, itself illustrates why such an initiative is welcome — and also, despite Pakistan’s war against extremism, that it is too early to claim that minority communities here can practise their faith freely without fear of reprisal. For far too long, as religious extremism increased, those belonging to minority faiths have found themselves with their backs to the wall and a state unwilling or unable to do its duty to protect their lives and property. As everyone knows only too well, the state’s policy of appeasing dangerously fanatical tendencies and extremist groups has cost this country dearly — both in terms of the blood of innocents and Pakistan’s international image. The Christmas Peace Train thus represents a much-needed celebration of inclusivity and pluralism. However, with reports that the Sindh legislature may amend the recently passed law against forced conversions, and with blasphemy prisoners such as Asia Bibi who belong to minority faiths and are shown no mercy, is this anything more than window dressing?
Source: Editorials
Published in Dawn December 25th, 2016