By Zubeida Mustafa

UNTIL recently a college textbook in Punjab described the Baloch as “uncivilised people who engaged in murder and looting”. This criminal aberration came to light three years ago when a senator from Balochistan discovered it and raised a hue and cry about it in the upper house of parliament.

By Rifaat Hamid Ghani

Imran Khan, if not compulsively destructive, is emblematic of change that is vested in rejection – a valid enough one of the misgovernment and self-enrichment of a power elite installed and sustained by preceding democratic electoral mandates. But rejection is only part of that process of change: the other part is replacement. Inevitably the electorate queries: Since you have removed the mafia dons and taken charge, what are you doing and what you have brought in? Also, what (if any) kind of ‘garbage’ disposal system does a getting-to-be-old new administration have in mind if what it rendered political ‘waste’ is not bio-degradable electorally?

By Zubeida Mustafa

IN 2004, nine years before the UN designated Nov 19 World Toilet Day, I visited Bombay to attend the World Social Forum. Early in the morning on the second day of our arrival in the port city, Rabeeya, another member of the Pakistan delegation, and I decided to take a stroll along the beach while our colleagues slept.

As we reached the sandy shores we encountered a bizzare sight. We saw hordes and hordes of what looked like pelicans perched on the edge of the waters. I was fascinated until Rabeeya squealed with horror. What my failing vision saw as pelicans were actually men — hundreds if not thousands of them — squatting on the beach to relieve themselves. I was shocked beyond belief.

By Zubeida Mustafa

DR Shershah Syed is a gynaecologist with a heart — and his heart has no fear. His claim to fame rests with his monumental services to underprivileged women suffering from fistula who would otherwise have been condemned as outcasts for the rest of their lives. Fistula is caused by prolonged labour in childbirth when the bladder is punctured causing urine to leak all the time.

Shershah’s battles for the cause of medical education in Pakistan have also brought him into the limelight as has his struggle to save the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council from the avarice of the power-hungry.