Category Archives: Social Issues

Language and thinking

Education, Language, Social Issues

By Zubeida Mustafa

EDUCATION is a much talked about issue in today’s Pakistan. Unfortunately it provokes little serious thinking and even less action. I keep hoping that this talk will turn into action sooner than later. Until that happens we need to continue talking to keep the matter alive.

At the Karachi Literature Festival recently the session on education which brought a number of top-ranking educationists together was, therefore, a positive move. As could have been expected, the speakers could only touch the tip of the iceberg.

One issue that came up in the course of the discussion that followed was that of critical thinking. Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, a very articulate example of a critical thinker, was spot on when he said that no school was teaching its students how to think — be it an elitist expensive institution or a low-fee community school. Continue reading Language and thinking →

Times of paradoxes

Health, Organ Trade and Donation, Politics, SIUT, Social Issues, Terrorism and Violence

By Zubeida Mustafa

WHAT a world of contrasts we live in. We have heartwarming tidings entwined with horrible news. We have compassionate souls struggling to save lives alongside brutes who blow the life out of people.

Then we have a government that is an intriguing compound of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Its conscience is not moved when it fails to provide security to the citizens while the police force guards the privileged of the land leaving ordinary folks vulnerable to acts of terror. But this very same government becomes the first to steer the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act 2013 (Thota) through the Sindh Assembly unanimously — an act of great humanity. Continue reading Times of paradoxes →

In letter and spirit

Education, Social Issues, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa

Activism is action for change. And if change is to result in progress and not chaos, the process must have leadership. In Pakistan most changes that have been experienced in the lives of women have been driven by activists or in other cases they have evolved from socio-economic compulsions. By its very nature, activism has been a risky game because it seeks change that undermines the power of the upholders of the status quo. In the case of women, activism has called for greater courage because it has an impact on society as a whole and not just a narrow section.

Take the Women’s Action Forum. It was born in the Zia era which is widely acknowledged as being the period when the most anti-women laws in Pakistan’s history were enacted in the name of Islamisation. Where would have we been today had the 17 founder members of the Women’s Action Forum not reacted to the harsh judgment handed down under the Hudood Ordinances in 1981?

Hence the decade of the 1980s may be called Continue reading In letter and spirit →

Lighting the torch

Education, Social Issues, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa

ACCORDING to the Annual Status of Education Report 2012, only 37 per cent of three-to-five-year-old children are enrolled in pre-schools in rural Pakistan. The enrolment is slightly higher in the urban areas (55 per cent).

This is a serious problem that has profound implications for the goal of ‘education for all’.

Having neglected the education sector for decades, the state is now faced with a huge backlog of out-of-school children the majority of whom have parents with no or little schooling themselves. This, plus poverty, has aggravated the crisis in education for which innovative solutions are now needed. Continue reading Lighting the torch →

“I have a problem, Baji”

Health, Population, Social Issues, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa

Yasmin has five children and she is just 27 years of age and has been married for nine years. The youngest son was born in July last year and was unplanned. In fact Yasmin had been quite happy with the one boy and three girls she already had.

When she came to me to break the news, she just said, “Baji, I have a problem.” These words captured succinctly the failure of the population planning programme in Pakistan. How else would you put it when a woman is saddled with an unwanted pregnancy, besides poverty and lack of education? Continue reading “I have a problem, Baji” →