All posts by Raza Jaffri

Our faulty data collection

Economy

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. — Mark Twain I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was prime minister than when anyone else was prime minister. That is a political statistic.

— Winston Churchill

Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all. — Charles Babbage

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman, who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. — Robert Heinlein
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What next in Balochistan?

Balochistan

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

ISLAMABAD knows the art of messing up situations that could be used to its advantage. Take the case of Balochistan. Backward, under-developed and impoverished, Pakistan’s largest province has been reduced to that state by the sardars who have ruled it for ages without doing anything for the uplift of their people.

They themselves received hefty sums from the Pakistan government. All the federal government had to do was to pump in development funds and reach out to the people directly who would then have responded by standing on their own feet and marginalising the feudal leadership.
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Why we lack good governance

Politics

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

THE state of governance is the single most important factor that determines the quality of public services provided to the citizens of a country. Many independent bodies and aid agencies that have looked into Pakistan’s development problems have attributed the malaise in public services — be they education, health, housing, water supply, transport, or sanitation — to poor administration.
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Caring for the mentally ill

Health

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

THE health sector has traditionally received Cinderella-like treatment from the policymakers in Pakistan. In this scheme of things, it is not surprising that mental health has been relegated to the lowest rung of the ladder, if for no other reason than that it is the most misunderstood branch of health science. It is also the most stigmatised.

Thanks to the efforts of the Pakistan Association for Mental Health and some committed psychiatrists, a measure of awareness has been created about mental illness in the country. But this is confined to the patients’, their families’ and the caregivers’ level. As a result, a large number of people suffering from a mental disorders who would previously visit pirs and mazars are now turning towards medical practitioners to seek treatment. But attitudes of the public have yet to change because no campaign on a massive scale has been undertaken to educate people about mental health and illness.
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What of education for the poor?

Education

By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn

AT A time when the poverty line and the number of people living below it in Pakistan are being hotly debated, there is another issue that needs to be addressed. That is the opportunity a poor person has to improve his economic and social status. Is it inevitable that a person at the bottom of the heap should be destined to remain there for many generations to come?

Unfortunately, that is how it is in this country, even though theoretically there is nothing to bar a person from striving for self-improvement and make progress. But the fact is that our society is so stratified economically that social and economic mobility is well nigh impossible for a person from the low income group. Even the power structure operates against the poor. In Europe we often hear stories of the sons and daughters of working class parents rising to become prime ministers of their country. Could one ever dream of that here?
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