Category Archives: Administration

Fight against illiteracy: an uphill task

Administration, Archive Edition, Books, Children and Youth, Development and Poverty, Education

By Nafisa Hoodbhoy and Zubeida Mustafa

“Bina parhayjo waqt gunwaya”, the powerful TV jingle, came to mind as we walked one after-‘ noon through a long dusty corridor of a government school in Korangi. We (were on a surprise visit to one of the Nai Roshni schools.

Going up a flight of stairs in the school building, we came upon a classroom without window panes. Seated on dusty wooden benches, with books open before them on rickety desks .were 24 boys in dishevelled shalwar-kameez and chappals. They listened intently as their young bearded teacher taught numerals on the blackboard with almost religious devotion.

This was a maths class in progress at the Nai Roshni school. After the teacher had finished he called upon one of the children to come and recite the tables. The boy did so with great zeal in a sing-song tone and the class repeated the lesson after him. Even when the child made a mistake the class did not falter. It was the teacher who would intervene. Obviously the emphasis was on the rote method so common in the schools here. Continue reading Fight against illiteracy: an uphill task →

The social sector: What the budget was likely to achieve

Administration, Archive Edition, Children and Youth, Development and Poverty, Economy, Education, Health, Housing, Human Rights, Labour, Population, Social Issues, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa

THE Federal Finance Minister has described Budget 1986-87 as being designed to provide relief to all sections of society in need of it.

Although there is greater emphasis on the social sectors and on welfare measures than before — their allocation having risen from 12 per cent of the budget in 1982-83 to 20 per cent in 1986-87 — the increase has been less than what was envisaged in the Sixth Plan. Continue reading The social sector: What the budget was likely to achieve →

The story of high targets, low performance

Administration, Archive Edition, Children and Youth, Economy, Education

By Zubeida Mustafa

EDUCATION planning in Pakistan has traditionally been lopsided, with the priorities misplaced. There has been too much emphasis on higher education, while the primary sector has, by and large, been neglected. Consequently, education has been like an inverted pyramid balanced on a narrow base.

The basic weakness in the government’s education policy lies in its reluctance or inability to allocate sufficient funds to this sector. Hence resources have had to be spread thin. Thus in 1982-83 Pakistan spent only 1.5 per cent of its GNP on education. Continue reading The story of high targets, low performance →

What kind of state did the Quaid envisage?

Administration, Archive Edition, Constitution, Guest Contributor, Islamisation, Politics

By Zuhair Siddiqi

geust-cont“MR. JINNAH is direct and blunt”, wrote R. G. Casey, the war-time Governor of Bengal, “and no one has any doubt what he means when he speaks”.This is a tribute which even the severest critic of the Quaid-i-Azam would not question; but in the State that he founded, and among his professed devotees, there has never been a dearth of people who would not hesitate to distort even the clearest of his pronouncements to suit their own ends and purposes. Take, for instance, his historic presidential address to the Constituent Assembly on the eve of the birth of Pakistan, which Mr. Bhutto rightly described some time ago as “one of the texts of our nationhood”. That speech, which includes the most emphatic enunciation conceivable of the ideal of a secular, single-nation State, has been a headache for obscurantists all these years. They have tried to explain away, distort, and even press, its sharpest and most significant parts. Continue reading What kind of state did the Quaid envisage? →