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Something really sad happened last week: Akbar Ali poisoned himself, his wife and three of his six children because of poverty. The man and his daughters are dead, while the wife is still alive. Only God knows what he must be thinking before he decided to take the toxic pills and leave his younger children to suffer alone. But this is something we will never know. Akbar was a worker at a garment hosiery factory and lost his job because the factory closed due to the current energy crisis. His problems compounded because he had a large family to support.
This is not the first poverty related suicide in the country and it won’t be the last. Berating the government for rising poverty will not make much difference unless it is backed by some serious thinking and action to tackle the issue. Akbar and his family would have been alive if he had a smaller family.
The biggest threat to Pakistan is neither its hostile neighbour, nor an international Zionist conspiracy. Rather, it is the country’s rising population. Pakistan’s population grew exponentially — from 33 million in 1947 to over 180 million in 2009. With over three million Pakistanis born every year, Pakistan is the second largest contributor to the world population after India. The total fertility at 4.0 is highest in the region as women in Pakistan have more children than its neighbours.
Although Pakistan initiated its first population control programme in the 1950s, it has not achieved much since then. There is minimal impact on use of contraceptives (only 23.9 per cent) and fertility has not reduced dramatically like it has in Bangladesh and Iran, although they started their family planning programmes in the 1970s and 1980s, respectively.
One of the reasons for the failure of family planning programmes in Pakistan is the administrative structure. Family planning is curiously separate from the health ministry and while it comes under the federal government, health is a provincial subject which completely de-links the two. Amalgamation of family planning in health is integral to achieve any success. Provision of all health services should be linked with family planning. The government needs to be pro-active in teaching young people about family planning and sternly deal with populist politicians who try to derail any such educational efforts.
A coherent approach is needed to combat the social and cultural stigma attached to it and it should be combined with effective service delivery in all parts of the country. Running adverts on TV is useless if the information provided on ground is ineffective and outreach activities are non-existent. To date, the biggest reason for the failure of the programme has been the lackadaisical attitude of successive government’s and lack of political commitment. Unless that is altered, change will remain elusive.
Forty per cent of Pakistan’s population lives below the poverty line and it can no longer ignore the fact that small families can help in coping with poverty more effectively. The government needs to realise and impart this message to others that low birth rates are needed to create national and personal wealth. Problems of high unemployment, increasing poverty, floundering education system, crises of food, water and energy will be exacerbated if we continue to add more and more people. If the population growth is not checked on priority basis, the country will be undone by the sheer number of its own people.
Originally written for Express Tribune
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Thursday, 24 June 2010
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
A country only for fanatic men
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Back in 2002 when I was a rookie journalist, I met Jeewanti, a teenager who was doused with acid to avenge a property dispute with her family. She was the first person I met who has faced an act of violence against her. Unfortunately, I have met various people since then who have faced violence and brutality, be it Munno Bheel who is fighting to release his bonded family for over a decade or the peon in my former office who fled his home in Chitral because he was a Shia living in a Sunni village fearing persecution for his faith. One of my friends has lost her uncle, a surgeon, during the period when sectarian groups were targeting and killing Shia doctors in Karachi.
Every minority, be it ethnic, religious or sectarian, and weaker groups have faced violence and persecution in this country. If you are a religious minority in the land of pure, you have about as much of an opportunity of growth as a one-legged man in a kicking competition. Constitution bars you from holding the highest offices in the country. Your temples and churches are vandalized and you are not allowed to propagate your religion. You are lucky if you are a Christian or a Hindu, at least you can call your places of worship by their real names; if you happen to be an Ahmadi, you cannot even do that.
If you are a child, you probably are one of too many children in the family; your parents do not give you enough food and attention. There are not enough schools and even if they are, you parents cannot afford to send you and you are working to contribute to family income. At workplace you are probably abused. If you leave home, you will definitely be sexually abused and will probably end up using drugs. If you happen to end up in a radical madrassah, there is a great likelihood that you will end up as a suicide bomber, perpetuating violence and terror to others.
If you are a sectarian minority, then you are on the hit list of all sectarian outfits. They can burn your houses and places of business if you are in Chitral or can shoot you from a distance of 2 meters in Karachi and get away with it. If you are an Ismaili Muslim, chances are the religious parties will try to get you declared a non Muslims when they can’t think of any other political issue to hijack.
If you are woman, you will be malnourished and uneducated to begin with. When you are a little older, you will probably be doused with acid, burned, tortured, married off to men of inappropriate age and character to pay off debts (vani), killed (karo kari) to either implicate or secure money from opponents of your family. You will be raped, at times even by the police and other security forces, to settle dispute and at times because men think they can get away with it. Your testimony in the court of law is that of half of a man, and your citizenships rights are limited.
The way things are in this country of ours; soon it will turn into a place where only rich right wing fanatic Sunni men would have any citizenship rights. If you are a religious Sunni man who is spewing venom against the minorities and women from the pulpits, you have an unassailable immunity. The way things are, the future migrations from the country would not be for economic reasons, they would be for liberty and freedom.
Originally written for Express Tribune. This is the unedited version.
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Friday, 11 June 2010
City of extremes
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A modern city is the locus of both opportunity and inequality. Migrants from the hinterland come to cosmopolitan centres looking for an urban experience. What they usually get is accommodation in polluted, overcrowded and under-serviced slums in hazardous locations, often brutally evicted by the city administration. Just like malls and expressways characterise a modern city, inequality and urban disparities also define it.
But inequality is not a new phenomenon; it has been a central feature of cities even in the medieval era where the rich and poor lived side-by-side in walled cities. If the city was divided along spatial class divide in the bygone era, it is now shaped more by the logic of the market than the needs of its inhabitants, in a globalised capitalist world, giving birth to newer types of inequalities.
The economic restructuring, the shift from labour-intensive production to capital-intensive production and from manufacturing to services has expanded informalisation. City centres are being gentrified – for instance eviction of hawkers and rickshaw-free zones – to attract global investment capital and the poor are being pushed into the slums and to the periphery, making them outsiders in their own cities. Though the problem persists everywhere, it is more pronounced in cities of the developing world. Karachi perhaps takes the cake for being the only city in the world where no public buses are allowed in the business centre of the city, I I Chundrigar Road, making it difficult for poor people to access capital and people with capital.
In terms of population Karachi is one of the fastest growing cities in the world and the ratio of inequality is growing just like its population. There is disparity in terms of access to everyday necessities such as drinking water, schools, clean neighbourhoods and safety. The inequality becomes more pronounced in times of distress such as deteriorated law and order situation and natural calamities. Before Cyclone Phet hit the shores of Keti Bunder there was warning that it may hit Karachi. While the affluent citizens were busy planning cookouts to celebrate the rain, thousands of citizens were dreading flooding and electrocution. This exposes the normally hidden caveats in the city administration’s capacity to deal with contingencies and the cavalier attitude of its well-heeled citizens who, instead of assisting people in the less well-off neighbourhoods, were busy storing up fuel for their generators. Last year over 25 people died and 150 injured due to rain in the most modern and cosmopolitan city of Pakistan. This is not counting the number of children who contracted water-borne gastroenteritis that afflicts slum dwellers every year after rains. For how long will people continue to die of electrocution because of faulty wiring and drown in open manholes which they cannot see in the rain?
A lot of important responsibilities of the state in responding to the needs of urban citizens are now transferred to non-state agents, who do not hold any accountability to the public, making the city a place of extremes — of immense wealth and poverty, of comfort and misery, cosmopolitanism and communalism, hygiene and disease, hope and despair. The question that we all need to ask is if we can continue to live in a city that renders millions of its poorer citizens ‘outsiders’. Such a stark divide usually leads to anarchy; can we afford more anarchy or do we need to make it a more inclusive city?
Originally written for Express Tribune
.
A modern city is the locus of both opportunity and inequality. Migrants from the hinterland come to cosmopolitan centres looking for an urban experience. What they usually get is accommodation in polluted, overcrowded and under-serviced slums in hazardous locations, often brutally evicted by the city administration. Just like malls and expressways characterise a modern city, inequality and urban disparities also define it.
But inequality is not a new phenomenon; it has been a central feature of cities even in the medieval era where the rich and poor lived side-by-side in walled cities. If the city was divided along spatial class divide in the bygone era, it is now shaped more by the logic of the market than the needs of its inhabitants, in a globalised capitalist world, giving birth to newer types of inequalities.
The economic restructuring, the shift from labour-intensive production to capital-intensive production and from manufacturing to services has expanded informalisation. City centres are being gentrified – for instance eviction of hawkers and rickshaw-free zones – to attract global investment capital and the poor are being pushed into the slums and to the periphery, making them outsiders in their own cities. Though the problem persists everywhere, it is more pronounced in cities of the developing world. Karachi perhaps takes the cake for being the only city in the world where no public buses are allowed in the business centre of the city, I I Chundrigar Road, making it difficult for poor people to access capital and people with capital.
In terms of population Karachi is one of the fastest growing cities in the world and the ratio of inequality is growing just like its population. There is disparity in terms of access to everyday necessities such as drinking water, schools, clean neighbourhoods and safety. The inequality becomes more pronounced in times of distress such as deteriorated law and order situation and natural calamities. Before Cyclone Phet hit the shores of Keti Bunder there was warning that it may hit Karachi. While the affluent citizens were busy planning cookouts to celebrate the rain, thousands of citizens were dreading flooding and electrocution. This exposes the normally hidden caveats in the city administration’s capacity to deal with contingencies and the cavalier attitude of its well-heeled citizens who, instead of assisting people in the less well-off neighbourhoods, were busy storing up fuel for their generators. Last year over 25 people died and 150 injured due to rain in the most modern and cosmopolitan city of Pakistan. This is not counting the number of children who contracted water-borne gastroenteritis that afflicts slum dwellers every year after rains. For how long will people continue to die of electrocution because of faulty wiring and drown in open manholes which they cannot see in the rain?
A lot of important responsibilities of the state in responding to the needs of urban citizens are now transferred to non-state agents, who do not hold any accountability to the public, making the city a place of extremes — of immense wealth and poverty, of comfort and misery, cosmopolitanism and communalism, hygiene and disease, hope and despair. The question that we all need to ask is if we can continue to live in a city that renders millions of its poorer citizens ‘outsiders’. Such a stark divide usually leads to anarchy; can we afford more anarchy or do we need to make it a more inclusive city?
Originally written for Express Tribune
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Tuesday, 1 June 2010
A time for introspection and soul-searching
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After every major incident of violence that is perpetuated in name of Islam, religious leaders, politicians and common man of the streets repeat that those who kill and maim others are not Muslims and Islam is not a violent religion. In past few years, too many Pakistanis, no matter what their faith and sect is, have died because someone killed them in the name of religion. The rhetoric that Islam is a peaceful religion will not cut it anymore. We need to introspect why as a society we tolerate violence in general and condone it when it is perpetuated in name of religion.
We bemoan the horrific crimes against Muslims under Israeli and US occupation in Palestine and Iraq and try to justify violence in our society because of those crimes but that is not true. We, as a society, condone torture and violence against weaker sections of the society in name of religion even before the invasion of Iraq and have legislation to support this violence. Both Blasphemy Laws, which can and have discriminated against minorities, and gender biased Hudood Ordinance use religion to maintain the status quo in which a powerful Muslim male is the sole source of authority and there is no room for personal liberty and individual thought. These laws make it very easy for anyone to score against either the non Muslims or women.
We glorify attackers and mass murderers such as Ahmed Shah Abdali, Nadir Shah and Mehmood Ghaznavi in our text books and popular media. We deify them and their acts of barbarism because they were Muslims and those who were killed by them were not Muslims. None of them fought in the name of Islam as we are led to believe. They were kings with colonial mindset who wanted to expand their kingdoms and annex the fertile heartland of river Indus, Ganga and Jamuna. Attaching any exalted and noble intentions to the expansion of their kingdom is factually and historically incorrect.
Shah Waliullah, who is venerated by most South Asian religious scholars, wrote a letter to Ahmed Shah Abdaali to invite him to attack the Marhattas. Shah Waliullah instigated this violent attack, which killed thousands of soldiers on both sides, because he did not like the declining clout of Muslims scholars in the court and hoped that the war would to restore Ulema's former power and influence. How can a society that lionizes people like him ever hope to achieve peace?
Tackling individual incidents of violence and terrorism can never bring the desired result. Unless the philosophy and ideology behind violence prompted in name of religion is challenged, there won’t be much point in expressing indignation over it. The Jamia Hafsa fiasco is a case in point. The administration of Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa violated many laws and started war against the state which is considered treason by the constitution of Pakistan but most Pakistanis including the politicians and highest level of judiciary voiced their opinion against government operation because it was against a group of people who were using religion to support their violent stance.
When religion becomes a source of income and a point of politics for people then people will use it to further their interests and foster violence in name of religion when it hurts their interest. Unless we decide to look inward and deal with such demons, peace will remain elusive.
Originally written for Express Tribune, this is the unedited version.
.
After every major incident of violence that is perpetuated in name of Islam, religious leaders, politicians and common man of the streets repeat that those who kill and maim others are not Muslims and Islam is not a violent religion. In past few years, too many Pakistanis, no matter what their faith and sect is, have died because someone killed them in the name of religion. The rhetoric that Islam is a peaceful religion will not cut it anymore. We need to introspect why as a society we tolerate violence in general and condone it when it is perpetuated in name of religion.
We bemoan the horrific crimes against Muslims under Israeli and US occupation in Palestine and Iraq and try to justify violence in our society because of those crimes but that is not true. We, as a society, condone torture and violence against weaker sections of the society in name of religion even before the invasion of Iraq and have legislation to support this violence. Both Blasphemy Laws, which can and have discriminated against minorities, and gender biased Hudood Ordinance use religion to maintain the status quo in which a powerful Muslim male is the sole source of authority and there is no room for personal liberty and individual thought. These laws make it very easy for anyone to score against either the non Muslims or women.
We glorify attackers and mass murderers such as Ahmed Shah Abdali, Nadir Shah and Mehmood Ghaznavi in our text books and popular media. We deify them and their acts of barbarism because they were Muslims and those who were killed by them were not Muslims. None of them fought in the name of Islam as we are led to believe. They were kings with colonial mindset who wanted to expand their kingdoms and annex the fertile heartland of river Indus, Ganga and Jamuna. Attaching any exalted and noble intentions to the expansion of their kingdom is factually and historically incorrect.
Shah Waliullah, who is venerated by most South Asian religious scholars, wrote a letter to Ahmed Shah Abdaali to invite him to attack the Marhattas. Shah Waliullah instigated this violent attack, which killed thousands of soldiers on both sides, because he did not like the declining clout of Muslims scholars in the court and hoped that the war would to restore Ulema's former power and influence. How can a society that lionizes people like him ever hope to achieve peace?
Tackling individual incidents of violence and terrorism can never bring the desired result. Unless the philosophy and ideology behind violence prompted in name of religion is challenged, there won’t be much point in expressing indignation over it. The Jamia Hafsa fiasco is a case in point. The administration of Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa violated many laws and started war against the state which is considered treason by the constitution of Pakistan but most Pakistanis including the politicians and highest level of judiciary voiced their opinion against government operation because it was against a group of people who were using religion to support their violent stance.
When religion becomes a source of income and a point of politics for people then people will use it to further their interests and foster violence in name of religion when it hurts their interest. Unless we decide to look inward and deal with such demons, peace will remain elusive.
Originally written for Express Tribune, this is the unedited version.
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