I contribute, do you?
From the Blog Ayesha's Blog: I contribute, do you? - Hello everyone, We are creating a pool of donors who can contribute monthly for needy patients of Thalassemia & for our Fight Against Thalassemia campaigns, If any of you are interested to become a donor, let me know. Our plan is to gather donors then according to the monthly contribution we will be sponsoring few non affording . Read Full Post
The smaller picture
From the Blog PkColumnist.com: The smaller picture - Big pictures are what we analysts and commentators do. The grand strategic overviews, the penetrating (well, sometimes) insights and the big ethical and political questions. Much of this can be done without moving from in front of our workstations. But if you want to see the smaller picture you actually have to get off your backside, spend hours in buses and vans, scramble up and down precipitous slopes, listen to interminable speeches, drink endless cups of tea and be prepared to accept any number of bouquets of flowers from children who seem to lie in wait behind every gate you pass through. Having spent several days in the Swat valley recently, picking our way through the bones of warfare and flood that scar the land wherever you look, I had a salutary lesson, a reminder that every big picture is made up of thousands of smaller ones. We were there with representatives of a UK/Pakistan NGO that I have worked with since the '05 quake and what we saw, heard and felt in our days with the people of Swat valley left all of us humbled, moved and impressed. Amidst the wreckage there was strong evidence of regeneration and rehabilitation. Not spotty little patches of it, but all over the place. Wherever we went there were people building houses, reviving ravaged fields that had been stripped of their topsoil, putting back the infrastructure that nature and conflict had taken from them. The people of Bathana village welcomed us on the site of a community organisation. 'On the site' because the building that housed their offices was destroyed in the 2008 operation, as was the mosque immediately adjoining them whose ruins angled obliquely at the sky. The Abaseen Foundation there and then committed to help them rebuild their mosque and in a memorable moment a spontaneous collection was taken to start the financial ball rolling. It felt good to put my own few rupees into the pot and others followed – but what we were really at Bathana to monitor was progress on the water channel that Abaseen was funding. The villages' primary agricultural water supply had been destroyed. The watermills were not working. The fields could not be irrigated. There was a crop in the ground now that needed water before the end of November. Work was already well advanced and we visited the site (some scrambling involved here, mental note to self that fitness has declined of late) and could see that the villagers had put in Herculean effort. They were delighted to see us and explained in detail how they would apparently make water flow uphill in order to save their winter crops, get the mills working again and provide washing facilities to any number of small mosques downstream from the project. Leaving under the watchful eye of the army who had very discreetly but very efficiently provided our security throughout, we headed back to Mingora. It was impossible not to note the ubiquity of the national flag, painted on doors, roller shutters, walls and just about any flat surface. I enquired at this display of patriotism and was told it was an act of defiance, encouraged by the army. (An unverifiable tale, but likely true.) The army had suggested painting the national flag on property as a message to the Taliban. A message that they were not welcome. A message that the people wanted their lives and culture back and they would stand against dark forces now and in the future. Every flag is a little picture. Remember that the next time you read a big-picture piece. . Read Full Post
The time of monsters
From the Blog PkColumnist.com: The time of monsters - In his acclaimed work De la Democratie en Amerique (Democracy in America), French historian and political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville, speculated on the future of democracy in the United States. He discussed the possible threats and dangers of democracy. His belief was that democracy had a tendency to degenerate into soft despotism hence developing into a tyranny of the majority. He also wrote that: "Events can move from the impossible to the inevitable without ever stopping at the probable." This act of transforming the impossible into the inevitable, a predicament for mere mortals, has been honed to perfection by the leading duo of this hapless land. The two latest confounding acts, among many others, were the appointment of Adnan Khwaja as chairman of OGDCL – he reportedly never went to college (but was Prime Minister Gilani's jail mate) – and President Zardari's newfound soul mate's tete-a-tete with Chaudhry Parwaiz Ilahi. That Parwaiz Ilahi had been named by Benazir Bhutto as someone who would be responsible for the crime if anything happened to her caused absolutely no concern in her bereaved spouse. Maybe lugging her photos here and abroad, with an occasional slogan of Zindah hai BB, zindah hai, are exertion enough for him. Personally compromised and mired in allegations, he seems beholden to a faction that similarly indulges in the unethical. The adopted maxim which necessitates the making of the impossible inevitable is that changed circumstances are a genuine and moral basis for changing policy. Elections per se or an elected government are a necessary condition for democracy, but not sufficient evidence to ensure that a functioning democracy is in place. Actual democracy depends on how elected institutions function and on citizens' involvement in between elections. The interaction between people and their rulers and various means by which a government can help them achieve societal satisfaction and material prosperity are the spirit of democracy. It also means ensuring public participation, transparency, accountability, political legitimacy, fair legal framework, predictability and efficiency. Democracy thrives on transparency; what we have is the transfer of power from one entrenched self-selected group to one acting and being the same. The much-touted political compromise ("reconciliation") that we have now is the lowest common denominator of agreement among compromising parties. All it has done is to facilitate perpetuation and sharing of power. In doing so, it has totally understated burning issues like Fata, Balochistan, the Karachi killings, power outages, the perpetual price hike, welfare of the flood victims and corruption. It only speaks with clarity and certainty about issues personally beneficial to the compromisers. The president, the prime minister and their defenders remain in a mode of stark denial. Immersed in self-enrichment, a proposed Accountability Bill waits to be adopted for the last 18 months. Detailed accounts of corruption scandals, failures and the damning Transparency International report (extensively quoted by parties when they are not in power) result in nothing but a schizoid compartmentalisation allowing them to maintain an all-is-well conviction. Thus the scope of reform becomes impossible. Denial of wrongdoings and failure lead to a bunkered isolation and the subsequent "inevitables" conjured aplenty. We have a grotesquely bloated administrative machine aloof from the people, answerable to none but the president. Such a body soon becomes answerable to no one at all. It is responsive to its own, however: the people who fill its top offices, its cronies and family connections. The monster we face is the PPP's kamikaze style of governance, its refusal to face reality, its increasing dependence on allies (disillusioned, yet loath to forsake power), a visionless trek to nowhere and its persistent abetment in all this. All this has produced a growing popular skepticism about politics and politicians. Italian philosopher and political theorist Gramsci criticised excessive political realism. Nobody expects a utopia from the present dispensation; a negation though by deeds of the last words of another Gramsci quote would do: "The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters." . Read Full Post
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