Intolerance in the curriculum

Kamila Hyat The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor There have been several shocking incidents over the past week or so that go only to highlight the kind of intolerance we are facing in our society and the manner in which this is spreading. Worst of all the spirit of hatred has also seeped into classrooms, and is being used to poison the minds of children. This process will of course lead to the emergence, even before our watching eyes, of yet another generation persuaded that it is acceptable to discriminate on the basis of beliefs or other factors, or that minority groups are inherently inferior to the majority – deserving no place in mainstream society. Just a few days ago, 10 Ahmadi children, seven of them girls, were expelled from a school in the Hafizabad area, simply on the basis of their religious identity. The incident took place soon after preachers promoting anti-Ahmadism had visited the town and lashed out with familiar vitriol against a religious group that has been thrust out of the mainstream and then subjected to years of vicious discrimination. The feeble plea by the principal of the private school, that he did not wish to turn away the children from the school doors but had no choice in the face of threats made by villagers, just goes to show how weak we have become. No one has answered the question of the distraught father of three of the girls driven away from school who asks how his daughters will now receive an education. Beyond the representatives of the Ahmadi community in Rabwah and some human rights groups, no one has spoken out in their support. The issue has not been discussed by furious media anchors, even though the Constitution of our land lays down in unequivocal terms that every citizen has a right to education and cannot be denied this under any circumstances. Such silence is perhaps the most dangerous element of all. The streets and other public places have been left to bigots, such as those who have been on the streets demanding the immediate release of Mumtaz Qadri, the man sentenced to death for the murder of Salmaan Taseer. Precisely the same silence prevailed after yet another horrendous incident at a school a few weeks ago when an eighth-grade Christian girl was turned out of a POF-run school in the town of Havelian after making a minor spelling mistake in an Urdu paper. Her teacher interpreted the mistake as an act of blasphemy, publicised the matter – which essentially revolved around one dot in a paragraph about a ‘naat’ – and as clerics staged protests the powerful POF management chose not only to expel the girl, but also to transfer her mother, a nurse at a hospital. Such incidents have occurred elsewhere too. Ahmadi children have been punished in schools, their faith ridiculed and admission denied simply on the basis of their religious beliefs. Amidst all this, we talk of ‘the silent majority’. But do we really know what people believe and think? It is true that many, indeed most, do not agree with the rabid views of the extremists. We would like to believe this is true. But popular thinking has been warped over the years by all kinds of factors that began essentially with the deliberate and evil distortions initiated in the early 1980s when our society first began its most serious transformation into an uglier, nastier place. Discrimination is not based on religious beliefs alone. At an elite Lahore private school, a child from a different ethnic background was mocked and subjected to continuous ridicule for his appearance. It seems that the school management didn’t do very much to check this behaviour or persuade the majority of students who had resorted to uncivilised conduct towards the student to correct their ways. Racism and bigotry of course need to be stopped using some degree of force within an environment in which the two have spread quite far and grown deep roots. African students based in colleges in Lahore and other cities will no doubt testify to the kind of treatment they face, solely on the basis of their skin colour. One question that we all need to ask is why the government sits by as a silent spectator while all this happens. It needs to play a far more proactive role. We stand where we are today as a result of carefully thought out behaviours and policies put in place in the past. They succeeded in twisting minds and creating an atmosphere in which hatred, distrust and intolerence could blossom. The need now is to begin an immediate reversal of this process. In the first place, the relevant authorities need to take notice of the instances of expulsion from schools on the basis of open and undisguised discrimination; this would put in place a good example of what should be done and where right separates from wrong, like oil from water. There is no time to lose. It is quite obvious that things are growing worse and worse virtually by the day. Our only hope for the future lies in nurturing a generation that is able to think more openly and adopt an approach which is different to the destructive one that has become a normal part of our society today. The provision that all citizens are equal needs to be turned into reality and not just a clause in a document that fewer and fewer people seem to be very bothered about. How do we begin this? Schools are a good place to start. Government schools are perhaps the best, given the number of children attending them and the control the administration should have over them. Through curriculums and training for teachers, both children and those entrusted with the delicate task of educating them need to learn to think differently. This is not an easy task of course. But it has been done elsewhere; Ireland, where Protestants and Catholics were deeply divided in the north for so many years, is one example where attempts towards greater harmony through schools have met with some success. There are other examples in the world. We need to emulate them and move towards building a place where people are ready to speak out for what is right and refuse to allow extremist elements – who attempt to validate their intolerant ways by citing a distorted version of religion – to dictate how we live and what we do.

As Kabul and Delhi edge closer

Zafar Hilaly It would be like riding the proverbial tiger. If we think we can somehow play the kingmaker and reap the harvest, that would be like Alice in Wonderland. Even the Taliban are no longer a cohesive force and some of them have developed their own agendas and are in cahoots with the TTP. In other words, the forces we can mobilise against the Northern Alliance and their external allies cannot be expected to serve as our strategic instrument. Indeed, given our internal and external situation, especially if there is a major rift with the US and others, the balance of power between us and the Taliban will shift in favour of the Taliban. And we may end up becoming their instrument. So much for strategic depth. The balance of power will not only shift in favour of the Taliban. Our own extremist groups that want renewed confrontation with India will also seek to force the pace of events by provoking India into retaliatory strikes if there is another Mumbai-type operation by them. What happens then: we have a war on our western border and also a dangerous war-like situation on our eastern border, both at the same time. The TTP would do all it can to seize territory as they did a few years ago, but this time with the additional advantage of our military being stretched too thin. And it would not take much for the TTP and Lashkar-e-Taiba to weaken the government and military further by stoking sectarian and other forms of violence inside the country. Nor would external forces opposed to our strategic depth hesitate to weaken the military by doing their bit to destabilise the country. Prolonged regional stalemate and progressive domestic degeneration might even undermine the military’s stature, making it more vulnerable to the machinations of our extremist groups. We saw a bit of that over the Osama bin Laden episode. So the TTP and other groups would be the real beneficiaries if we tried to put the Quetta Shura back in the saddle and threw caution to the wind. During the ten years that have elapsed since the Taliban were ousted from Kabul, the nature of the Taliban has changed in some respects. It has become a decentralised force consisting of commanders who have been operating more like warlords with their own sources of funds and areas of local dominance, some with close links to Al-Qaeda’s lucrative connections and to its regional ambitions. In other words, there are now various localised power centres, and their connection with the TTP as well makes the situation much more complicated. There are many foreigners too that are embedded with local Taliban outfits in a common cause not only to regain Kabul but also to pursue Al-Qaeda’s regional agenda encompassing Pakistan and Central Asia. Nor should Al-Qaeda be written off simply because it has weakened at the top. In a protracted conflict it will find new opportunities that might see it bounce back and the Af-Pak border might become more important than prospects in Somalia and elsewhere. Clearly, then, there seem to be two courses of action open to Pakistan. To go down the old route and risk further conflict with the US, India, et al, and international isolation; or continue cooperating with the US and, rather than frittering our energies and attention in closing off the wiggle room Karzai has provided India, to do a better job in securing their lives and property and growing the economy. Besides, in my opinion, India is not the issue. That’s a secondary thing. It’s the dysfunctional relationship between the US and Pakistan, more than anything else. And there are questions about their respective ambitions. Unless those ambitions are trimmed and brought into some balance, there is little hope of ending a war that seems interminable. That hurts Pakistan more than it does Afghanistan, which is already a failed state, or America, which is far away. Any peace settlement, unless underpinned by the US and Pakistan, has little hope in getting off the ground. We should be taking the lead on this, rather than allowing the deteriorating situation to overwhelm us. The bilateral and trilateral diplomatic mechanisms are not enough as the past three years have shown. A more multilateral approach is required, if only to keep the main players (the National Alliance, the Taliban, Pakistan and the US) on the path to a negotiated settlement. Right now we are in a dangerous limbo, all the main players sharpening their knives for yet another decade of mayhem.

Economic free fall ahead

Dr Muhammad Yaqub There is a near-unanimous professional view outside official circles that the economy is in a very bad shape. The political leadership is unable or unwilling to understand the depth of the economic troubles and is busy with its usual business, as if all is well on the economic front. For public consumption, government representatives talk about becoming self-reliant or depending on trade rather than aid, without evolving a strategy to do so. The government promises to control inflation without developing a concrete plan to limit domestic bank borrowing for deficit-financing. There is a daily promise to reduce unemployment without a coherent and consistent policy framework meant to promote private investment and economic growth. We hear talk about pursuit of an independent foreign policy and strong national defence, without the realisation that they are impossible amid a decaying economy. In short, the political leadership is trying to build a castle in the air and a fools’ paradise, promising the people to take them there out of the hell of their daily economic miseries. The technocrats hired to give politicians a sound professional advice are either unable to explain the real state of the economy to them or the politicians pay no attention to the views of their professional advisers, who even then hold on to their positions to enjoy associated perks and privileges. In their presence, and even through them, the government continues to spend without restraint by borrowing from the domestic banking system, including the State Bank of Pakistan, and incurring more external debt on increasingly harsher terms. The country is being mortgaged. We are used to the unfulfilled promises of politicians, but it is unfortunate that even the technocrats hired to do a professional job are acting like politicians. There is a general tendency on their part to depict a rosy picture of a gloomy economic situation, based on twisted facts, false hopes and empty promises. The most recent example is that of the finance minister (who is an economist by profession) informing the nation that the comfortable level of foreign exchange reserves has led the government to withdraw from the IMF programme with no fear of external debt default or adverse economic consequences. When the IMF programme was operational and people were suffering, they were led to believe that their economic hardships were mainly due to the tough conditionality of the IMF. Now when the IMF programme has been terminated, and people’s sufferings continue unabated, they are being misled that the economy is on its way to recovery and all will be well. There could be nothing farther from truth. History has also been a poor teacher for the economic managers in Pakistan. Both in 1994 and 2007, when foreign exchange reserves went up temporarily for exogenous reasons, the governments decided to pull out of IMF programmes with self-created illusions and poor advice of their immediate advisers. After a very short period, the government ended up back in the IMF’s lap on their terms. The current economic team of the government has also made a similar decision. Unable to persuade the political leaders to undertake the necessary economic reforms that would have kept the IMF programme operational they have pre-emptively disengaged from the IMF claiming victory for themselves over the IMF. They are likely to repeat history on their watch once again. The economic team has not found it necessary to tell the nation the truth that foreign exchange reserves have increased due to substantial borrowing from the IMF and other international financial institutions, bilateral loans and cash reimbursements by the US tied with Pakistan’s role in the Afghan war, unusually high export proceeds reflecting a high level of world cotton prices and unusually high inflow of remittances unrelated to government policies. All of these are nonrecurring and reversible factors, and in some areas reversal has already begun. It is an unsustainable situation without strong policy action and change of direction in economic management. From now onwards, there would be a net outflow to the IMF in the absence of a programme, other creditors would need to be paid while their disbursement levels will decline, export growth may be nominal and remittance inflows will remain uncertain. With market psychology turning negative, speculative holding of dollars will increase and foreign exchange reserves will decline at a steady pace. Once market panic sets in, the decline in reserves will accelerate. With the termination of the IMF programme, there is a more urgent need, not less, to address the structural economic problems to halt a further slide of the economy. The public needs to be taken into confidence about the forthcoming economic hardship for it to be prepared for more sacrifices if we have indeed decided to stand on our own feet. In the absence of an operational fund programme, there will be a decline in the net foreign financing of the budget from what was expected and budgeted, mandating more austerity in expenditure and a bigger domestic resource mobilisation effort. But given its track record, it is inconceivable that the government would be prepared and able to take tough additional revenue generating and expenditure reducing measures. The more likely scenario is that the government will engage in excessive spending on the eve of elections. The rising expenditure in the context of a fall in the net external financing of the budget will be financed by more domestic borrowing. This borrowing will mostly be from the State Bank and commercial banks which, in turn, will accelerate the rate of inflation and depreciation of the exchange rate. In its own turn, the depreciation will add to inflation, speculative holding of dollars and a further deterioration in the fiscal situation due to a rise in foreign debt servicing in rupee terms, completing a vicious circle. Inflation is taxation on the poor to subsidise the rich. Hence, economic disparity will widen and social tensions will mount. People’s trust in the local currency will decline and dollarisation, commodity hoarding and real-estate investments will be used as a hedge against inflation by those who can afford to do so. The other segments of society will begin to move towards the poverty line, if they are not already there. Ultimately all these developments will lead to political instability and social and economic chaos. If such a chaos is to be averted, it is important that the government undertakes prompt structural economic reforms. It should be understood that status quo is not a viable option. Those policy measures have been discussed in details in the print media, in TV talk shows and in drawing-room conversations. We have crossed the stage of discussions and the government needs to take concrete action if the economy is to be saved from freefall.