Category Archives: Development and Poverty

Hamza Alavi: The activist academic

Development and Poverty, Economy, Education, Islamisation, Social Issues

 

By Zubeida Mustafa

Thirty-six years ago Hamza Alavi shot into fame in the academia when he wrote an article in the newly-founded The Socialist Register. He propounded the thesis that the middle peasants were initially the most militant elements of the peasantry and could therefore be a powerful ally of the proletariat movement in the countryside. Since this hypothesis reversed the sequence suggested in Marxist texts — that poor peasants are the main force of the peasant revolution — Alavi became quite controversial.

That is how he has always been — controversial. His thesis labelled the Alavi-Wolf thesis (as it was reiterated by Eric Wolf four years later) is “still alive and kicking and refuses to die”, to use Alavi’s own words. It was still being debated in 1995. “I made a distinction between the Marxist theory and the practical Mao,” Alavi says reminiscently today. Continue reading Hamza Alavi: The activist academic →

Soul companion: Bilquis Edhi

Archive Edition, Children and Youth, Development and Poverty, Notable Personalities, Social Issues, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa

Conventional wisdom has it that “behind every successful man in a woman”. In Abdus Sattar Edhi’s case, the woman is not behind him. She is there right beside him and now she is equally well-known. Today Bilquis Edhi has a public stature in her own right and not simply as the wife of Pakistan’s greatest social worker and humanist.

It would appear paradoxical that in a milieu where the female presence is virtually non-existent, a woman should have carved an exalted niche for herself. Mithadar, the downtown neighbourhood of Karachi from where the Edhis operate, is predominantly a male preserve. You hardly ever see a woman treading its narrow and unpaved lanes. Yet this is Bilquis Edhi’s kingdom. For more than 30 years, she has worked quietly without any fuss looking after distressed women and children while her husband collected the accolades. Continue reading Soul companion: Bilquis Edhi →

Can it be implemented?

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

By Zubeida Mustafa

IT is a strange coincidence that two important documents pertaining to education were released in Pakistan in March 1998 within a span of a few days. One was the report titled Human Development in South Asia 1998: The Education Challenge prepared by Dr Mahbubul Haq and Khadija Haq and published by the Human Development Centre, Islamabad, and the Oxford University Press (Pakistan). The other was the Pakistan government’s education policy prepared by the Federal Ministry of Education.

Continue reading Can it be implemented? →

A new look at old freedom movement myths

Administration, Archive Edition, Constitution, Development and Poverty, Economy, Education, History, Notable Personalities, Politics

Hamza-Alavi-17-05-1996-1

By Zubeida Mustafa
Professor Hamza Alavi has recently been in town. The suave, soft-spoken scholar, who says he developed a social conscience and became a socialist even before he had ever heard the word, has lived abroad for over three decades in pursuit of his academic career. Now he plans returning permanently to the city of his birth. That is, if he does not change his mind at the eleventh hour as he has done before. Continue reading A new look at old freedom movement myths →

Filling a vacuum

Archive Edition, Development and Poverty, Environment, General, Notable Personalities, Water

89-11-07-1995

By Zubeida Mustafa

Wnen I went to call on Safina Siddiqi on her return from South Africa where she had gone to receive UNEP’s Global 500 Roll of Honour award on the World Environment Day, she was not home. Her house-help who has been with the family for over 20 years duly informed me that she was somewhere in the neighbourhood. I set out to hunt for her, being familiar as I was with her favourite haunts. Within five minutes I had located Safina. There she was at the roadside supervising the planting of saplings. Her hands were full of soil, for she considers her supervision incomplete if she does not show her personal involvement in the work by joining the gardeners in their task.

That did not surprise me. For that is how I have always found Safina — down-to-earth, unassuming with no airs about her and always ready to pitch in when help is needed. No sooner had I asked her how she was, that her eyes lit up and she went on to give me the details of how she had planted sixty-two saplings further down the road before she left for Pretoria. Continue reading Filling a vacuum →