Monthly Archives: September 2021

ٻار جي پيروي ڪريو

زبيده مصطفٰی

ترجمو: انيتا ڪمل

تازو ئي مون کي هڪ نهايت اطمينان بخش تجربو ٿيو،جنهن مون کي ٻارن جي حوالي سان اميد ڏيکاري. مون استادن جي هڪ ڪورس دوران پنجن ليڪچرس ۾ هڪ مبصر جي حيثيت سان شرڪت ڪئي، جيڪو پاڪستان مونٽيسوري ايسوسيئيشن ڪراچي جي تعاون سان رٿيو ويو هو.

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Is it child abuse?

By Zubeida Mustafa

HERE is a narrative to introduce the subject so close to my heart. At a family gathering, I was chatting with my cousin’s granddaughter, a lively girl of three. As she told me about her interests I asked her to move closer as I couldn’t hear her and I pointed to the hearing aid I was wearing. She obliged me and showed great interest in the tiny device, asking intelligent questions about it before examining it. What impressed me was her curiosity and eagerness to learn.

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Democratic attempts

By Rifaat Hamid Ghani

WIELDERS of political power and the executive and administrative authority accompanying office are remembered for the ambience of life under their rule as well as the formative sometimes indelible imprints they leave on public consciousness and civic discourse and behaviour.  When leaders or their policies are controversial their impact can be polarizing, even destructive. But if controversial leaders are within themselves essentially tolerant and open-minded – whether or not society is hidebound – these differences of opinion stimulate debate and communication which are the indispensables of a healthy, vital, thinking society.

            So what to do when ugly differences emerge and leadership lacks the will or skill to handle conflict with good sense? Us Pakistanis have seen our leaders resort to oppression and suppression; and the consequences both of resistance and lack of resistance.

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It is for the child, Sir

By Zubeida Mustafa

I have a little friend in Kheiro Dero in Larkana district named Sitara, a bright child of six. She speaks Sindhi. I speak Urdu. Yet, we get on well. We don’t need a language to communicate in our friendship.

But in education, one needs a language. Sitara’s father has dreams of educating his little darling and so Sitara started her schooling at the Ali Hasan Mangi Memorial Trust community school, which makes education a fun activity for its students — the best way for a small child to learn.

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Cause for thought

By Rifaat Hamid Ghani

          Pakistan’s hybrid politics may also be dubbed mongrel in that the product is apparent but origins uncertain. That is not all – there is a growing anxiety that present hybridity could progress from the mongrel to pariah: What might follow?

What used to be mainstream parties – not just in terms of their national vote-banks but also in orientation and focus – have adopted the PTI’s signature mode of accusatory venomous rhetoric. Coalitional incumbents can also indulge in a self-glorification the unfairly free media helps it to propagate, while denying the facility to the opposition. Such, since quite some time, is the totality of Pakistan’s political language. Most of us have stopped listening; but political fatigue and passivity can cost.

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Serving society

By Zubeida Mustafa

THE contradiction is intriguing. It is a story of a woman of royal lineage who passed away recently and will be remembered fondly for her services to the poor. Her work should be seen in the context of ‘social security’. That is what made ‘Rajkumari’ Kaniz Sakina Wajid Khan (1920-2021) exceptional.

It was not charity she was doling out, as social work is often considered to imply today, but a service she saw herself providing to the indigent. It additionally had the underpinnings of old-time values.

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