Monthly Archives: April 2016

Enemies of the poor

Children and Youth, Culture and the Arts, Development and Poverty, Economy, Education, Environment, Housing, Justice, Notable Personalities

By Zubeida Mustafa

EIGHT years ago, a young woman from Khairo Dero (Larkana district) was so touched by the plight of her people that she decided to work for their uplift.

She had been fortunate to receive a privileged education abroad, was doing a lucrative job and had all that one could wish for in life. Today, she has renounced these privileges to work for her people. .

Thus Naween Mangi set out on her journey of creating a model village for development in Khairo Dero. Continue reading Enemies of the poor →

Change: at all costs?

Administration, Constitution, Defence and Disarmament, Guest Contributor, Politics

By Rifaat Hamid Ghani

guest-contributorIT is time we stopped taking the easier choice of setting out to scrap a faulty political setup and system and focused on laboring to better it: That means allowing it to function and, in that very process, rectifying its deficiencies. For what is the innovative alternative?

We have tried both parliamentary and presidential democratic modes. We have undergone four varieties of military dictatorship. We have framed and discarded more than one constitution. We have journeyed from centralising West Pakistan’s provinces into one unit, into the mysterious provincial autonomy of the Eighteenth Amendment to the 1973 constitution. Continue reading Change: at all costs? →

Keeping them illiterate

Children and Youth, Constitution, Education, General, Human Rights, Islamisation, Language

By Zubeida Mustafa

Going by the number of education policies announced in Pakistan since 1947, the volume of reports produced by commissions on this issue of direct concern to human development and the statements issued by government dignitaries pledging their commitment to universalising education, one would have thought that by now  Pakistan must be heading the world  education league.

What is the reality? The UNDP, which compiles the Human Development Index using schooling as one of the criteria, tells us another story. In its 2015 report, Pakistan is categorised as a Low Human Development country and ranks 147th out of 188 states. The mean years of schooling for children is 4.7 years and only a third of the population above 25 has had some secondary schooling. Continue reading Keeping them illiterate →

Home is school

Education, Social Issues, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa

THE paradox of education in Pakistan is that the children of the poor are not getting enough of it, while the offspring of the rich get a surfeit. Neither is good for the child.

The privileged class faces a dilemma due to the commercialisation of the education system. Mothers with young children complain about the burden of classwork and tuitions. What they worry about is the overload of studies that overflows from school hours to tuition time. Continue reading Home is school →

Indomitable to the very end

General

Indomitable to the very end

Naushaba
By Zubeida Mustafa
A tribute to renowned journalist Naushaba Burney (1932-2016).

Over 60 years ago, a young woman in her twenties walked into a classroom at Karachi University to teach journalism to a bunch of young students, most of whom were men. There were not many female students then in this newly launched institution of higher education located in the heart of Karachi. To have a woman teach men of her own age was something unusual and it could have deterred the boldest of women.

For Naushaba Burney this was a challenge. She acquitted herself with grace and won many admirers. Her education abroad gave her the confidence to play a pioneering role in a predominantly male environment. Having studied at Columbia University, the University of California Berkeley and the University of Oregon, Eugene from 1953-1956, Naushaba was highly qualified for the job she had clinched. Continue reading Indomitable to the very end →