Monthly Archives: March 2011

Ringing the alarm bells

Education

By Zubeida Mustafa

AT long last some in the government have belatedly woken up to, what they term, the education emergency in Pakistan. The emergency is not new. What is new is the realisation(?) in official quarters that we face a crisis. The co-chairperson of the Pakistan Education Task Force (PETF) Shahnaz Wazir Ali has therefore launched a campaign exhorting people to march for education and sign a petition “to force Pakistan’s leaders to finally get serious about providing every child with a decent school and a committed teacher”.

In a dramatic presentation we are informed that 25 million children are out of school in Pakistan. One may add that few of those who are enrolled receive quality education. The physical infrastructure is appalling and the state of pedagogy is dismally shocking.

Click here to read the full article on Dawn.com.

The war of elephants

Health, Social Issues

By Zubeida Mustafa

THE Raymond Davis episode has proved, if nothing else, how impossible it is to fit people into neat categories. Although we love to brand people as leftist and rightist, liberal and conservative, Islamist and secular, radical and traditional, we now know how off the mark we are when we do that. Those who used Davis as a flogging horse to vent their anti-American sentiments were a disparate lot. There were people from both ends of the spectrum and only Davis was their meeting point.

Dr Farhat Moazzam, head of the Centre for Biomedical Ethics and Culture at SIUT, was absolutely right when she made a plea to the audience at the seminar on “Muslim women” to stop labeling people. Of course she was speaking in another context but whatever the occasion this practice polarises society.

As a result of this war of ideas the middle ground is shrinking and we are talking “at” each other and not “with” each other. At the CBEC seminar, Asma Jahangir, the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, emphasised the importance of people being given the right to speak. What should also be emphasised is that the right to speak implies the corresponding duty to listen.

Click here to read the article on Dawn.

So grave and terrifying

Health

By Zubeida Mustafa

DR Tipu Sultan, president of the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA), has described the health situation in the country as ”grave, embarrassing and terrifying”. He is not exaggerating. A report titled Health of the Nation that the PMA has prepared is a scathing indictment of the state of the health sector. There has been a tremendous slide and the progress made in the last decade has been literally wiped out.

It is strange that in the chaos that engulfs Pakistan today, the crumbling state of the health care system — on which our destiny hinges — has been totally ignored. With public attention focused on our unsavoury politics, many health concerns have gone unnoticed.

Surprisingly our rulers should fail to see the connection between politics and health – a fundamental right of the citizens. The state of their health determines their span of life, sense of well being – both physical and mental — stamina to work and so on. These factors are basic to a nation’s productivity and therefore its national economy. As for our politics, it is influenced by our human capital, that is in turn shaped by the state of health and quality of life of the people.

Please click here to read the full article.

One woman who changes lives

Development and Poverty, Education, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa

Saira Zaidi does not fit into the gender image of Pakistan as it emerges from the recently-released UNDP’s Human Development Report 2010. This ranks the country as 112th out of the 119 states given a ranking. The UNDP describes gender inequality as a barrier to development. Statistics also confirm the existence of this barrier in Pakistan.

But Zaidi is an exception. Hers has been a valiant struggle to help women overcome adversity. Following the Chinese dictum of teaching a person fishing rather than giving him fish to eat, Zaidi has adopted the strategy of helping women to help themselves.

I first met Saira Zaidi when I was visiting the Korangi Academy, a school for underprivileged children. On the outskirts of Karachi, Korangi technically qualifies as an urban centre but it contains islands of underdevelopment that lack all the utilities that one takes for granted in a modern society. The Academy is designed to serve the children of the adjoining eight Goths (villages) with a population of 200,000.

The school has the Infaq Education and Training Centre attached to it and Zaidi is heading IETC. But she has not restricted herself to teaching pedagogy to young women who then go on to teach children in schools all over the city. In the last eight years 487 young women have benefited from Zaidi’s programmes. Her mission is to help the women of the Goths to lift themselves out of the morass of poverty and oppression they are mired in.

Her efforts have started paying off. Her community development project enables Zaidi to reach out to the women in the Goths where literacy is low (estimated to be ranging between 18 to 25 per cent with a very small ratio being women).

A visit to the Goths is an eye-opener. Just a few kilometres away from the hub of civilisation lives humanity that is untouched by the march of progress. Lacking potable water and sanitation, the Goths have unpaved and narrow streets, some with sewers overflowing and garbage littered around. I saw some children playing around who should have been in school.

The homes I visited were small and dingy, but they were neat. One could see that living conditions were crowded as families are traditionally large, seven/eight children being the norm. This is one of the challenges Zaidi and her seven counsellors face in their community work. Family planning is a sensitive issue. Yet she talks about it but subtly. She now feels she is making an impact. The marriage age of girls has gone up by several years. An additional factor could also be the new phenomenon of girls going to school and taking up jobs.

Another change that Zaidi feels is taking place is the willingness of women to take control of their lives to empower themselves when they can. They are trying to move out of the shadows of their men folk many of whom are drug addicts and do not work for a living. With Zaidi’s help and encouragement young teacher trainees from the Goths have opened home schools for young children. Fourteen of them are now operating and 2250 children have been their beneficiaries since 2003. Of these 1601 went on to join regular schools.

Another success story Zaidi is proud of is the budget resource group. Set up by three teachers and six students of the IETC this was launched as a pilot project to teach basic mathematics and budgeting skills to women who do not even recognise the various denominations of currency bills. After three weeks of training the group moved to the home of one of the members. It has now become a nucleus for women’s collective activities.

‘Immediate results have been heartening,’ Zaidi says. The housewives of the community who participated in the initial course found their lives transformed. ‘They have become money wise and can now manage their monthly household budgets independently and also deal with shopkeepers, who previously exploited their ignorance by over-charging them,’ Zaidi remarks.

She feels that this project has become a catalyst for change. It shows that women from the community – the most oppressed lot at the bottom of the heap – can improve their lives thanks to one woman who showed them the way. But Zaidi would be happier when she finds that she has created the critical mass necessary for the women of the Goths to continue the work that has been started without outside intervention.

Pictures Courtesy IETC.

An acre for every woman

Development and Poverty, Economy, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa

According to Amartya Sen, people starve not because there is not enough food to feed them but because food is unaffordable. It is also important to note that starvation is not the extreme condition of going without food. It also implies insufficient food intake as to cause malnourishment. If women are given the title to a little land they will grow enough food to feed their family and sell the surplus they produce. Thus they will meet their other needs. The idea is not far-fetched because at present eighty per cent of the work on farms is performed by women in the form of unpaid female labour. It receives no formal recognition. To provide an acre to every woman would call for some kind of land reforms which amounts to asking for the moon in Pakistan today. Hence Green Economics Initiative’s slogan “an acre for every woman” also offers an alternative, “or at least sixteen square feet”. What use will sixteen square feet be for agriculture, one may ask.

Click here to read the full article.