All posts by Raza Jaffri

Our population time bomb

Health, Population, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa

PAKISTAN’S Population Census Organisation’s website has a population clock on the home page which gave the country’s population as 179,850,379 on Tuesday — an average increase of 9,700 every day.

According to the National Institute of Population Studies (NIPS), Islamabad, the country’s population was 133.3 million in 1998 when the last census was held. This comes to a whopping increase of 34.8 per cent in 13 years (2.6 per cent per annum) which surprisingly has gone unnoticed. In effect we have slipped down from the two per cent (NIPS) or 1.8 per cent (World Bank) figure we were given as the growth rate for 2010. Continue reading Our population time bomb →

Making deals with the devil

Development and Poverty, Health, Organ Trade and Donation

By Zubeida Mustafa

IN his recently published memoirs, Jagtay Lamhay, Justice Haziqul Khairi, retired chief of the Federal Sharia Court, recalls his judgment upholding the transplantation law in Pakistan. The Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Ordinance (2007) had been challenged by some surgeons on the ground that it violated the Sharia.

Justice Khairi writes that the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) country chief in Pakistan, Dr Khalif Bille, described this as a “great” judgment. Soon thereafter the two Houses of parliament passed unanimously an act by the same name in 2010 to replace the ordinance. On that occasion the Assembly gave a standing ovation to Prof Adibul Hasan Rizvi, the director of the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation and the person responsible for spearheading the 15-year campaign for legislation to regulate organ transplantation and check organ trade in Pakistan. The Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act (THOTA) was acknowledged by WHO as the best law on this subject in the world. Continue reading Making deals with the devil →

The language conundrum revisited

Development and Poverty, Education, Language

PAKISTAN has failed to educate its children. This is shameful and now we have the proverbial insult added to injury.

It is in the form of the numerous myths and misconceptions about language circulating on the Internet and in conferences on education that have caught the public imagination. This creates pressure for education in English.

An article by Gwynne Dyer, a Canadian syndicated columnist, in this paper spoke of ‘The triumph of English’. It was a clever piece of writing in that it dwelt very convincingly on the importance of the English language in the globalised world of today. It also said, “The amount of effort that is being invested in learning English is so great that it virtually guarantees that this reality will persist for generations to come.” Continue reading The language conundrum revisited →

Educating the Educators

Children and Youth, Development and Poverty, Education

By Zubeida Mustafa

THE commodification of education is going full steam ahead. Not only is education being recognised as a good to be sold, its sales strategies are also being discussed. Any good sells better if it has a brand name that has a popular appeal, we are told. Forget what Naomi Klein writes in No Logo There.

Faisal Bari’s article in these pages ‘Expanding school systems’ (April 27, 2012) came as an eye-opener. In the article, the writer appears to have written off the public school system altogether. Undoubtedly it has reached the lowest ebb and can sink no further. But does that justify an approach that apparently consigns the common man to the bottom of the heap and absolves the government of all responsibility in the matter of educating Pakistani children, Article 25-A of the constitution notwithstanding? Continue reading Educating the Educators →

Friends pay tribute to Zubeida Mustafa

Media, Women
Nuzhat Kidwai of WAF reading out a narratives, How we feel about you, from a scroll at the function at the Karachi Press Club on Friday. — Photo by White Star

KARACHI: Women activists, intellectuals, media persons, friends and fans joined hands to pay tribute to senior journalist Zubeida Mustafa at a programme organised by the Women Action Forum at the Karachi Press Club on Friday evening.

The guest of honour, Zubeida Mustafa, who recently won the prestigious International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) Lifetime Achievement Award, was showered with rose petals by WAF workers as she arrived at the event. Continue reading Friends pay tribute to Zubeida Mustafa →