Education bazaar

Though there is a very welcome emphasis on debates and personality development, there is hardly any emphasis on discipline and character development

In this recessionary environment, one industry that is flourishing is the private school industry. There is logic behind this boom: the terrible state of public school education in the country. With such a dearth of quality education it is but natural that market forces create opportunities for private entrepreneurs to fill this gap. However, this is not a Coke or Pepsi being sold that can advertise massively and keep on increasing its share in the market. It is education, and education is a subject of constitutional importance Thus, even for private education, government participation is not necessary but government regulation is mandatory. However, like most other areas of governance, the private school industry has also been left on its own with the result that today the industry, instead of being in a perfect competition, is almost like an oligopoly where the terms of education are almost entirely in the hands of the school owners.

Private schools in major metro cities house as much as 40 percent of total enrolled children. The abysmal public school system has made even the lower middle and middle-class parents look for better options for their children. Every parent feels education is an investment and thus is willing to spend beyond his/her budget for it. This need and gap is then exploited by the schools that keep on increasing fees without really explaining and justifying the fee to parents. The attitude of the school is that if you are not happy we are happy to let you go. For parents to find a cheaper and a better option by uprooting their children from one system to another becomes too difficult to opt for. Thus, what happens is that private schools randomly charge for every expense imaginable including advance tax, generator, library, sports and you name it, that also as three months advance. The fee for three months ranges between Rs 50,000 to 100,000 on the average per child for a good private school with a yearly increase at any rate possible. Recently, in Punjab, an order was passed to forbid the private schools from taking collective fees for summer vacations. According to sources, private schools would be allowed to receive a fee separately for each month. The official notification issued from the office of secretary education Punjab reads that the schools breaching the code would be dealt with the law. The schools found violating the orders would be sealed, said the officials of the education department. No school has bothered as they know how to grease the palms of those trying to do their duty.

Private schools may be better in quality than public schools but are they really up to the quality that they are charging for? Despite paying hefty fees for putting children into these schools, nearly 95 percent of children are taking tuitions additionally. The tuition fee per subject can run into five digits depending on the subject. Then there is a question of the facilities available. Most of the schools start in congested commercial buildings with no proper grounds and sports facilities. Even top of the line schools that have built bigger campuses struggle in providing multiple sports and lab facilities. O level and A level education has become simply a race of getting to the best tuition centre and then practicing the previous five years’ papers and ensuring A grades to get you admission into higher classes, very similar to the guess paper methodology of the public school system. Though there is a very welcome emphasis on debates and personality development, there is hardly any emphasis on discipline and character development. Thus, these schools do produce better grades and English speaking accents but do they produce enlightened and cultured intellect?

School business creates not only tuition fee as revenue but also accessory fee as additional margins. Books and uniforms for example can only be purchased from designated shops that are either commission partners or joint ventures etc. This anti-competitive behaviour should be looked into. The Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) has initiated a probe into the possible anti-competitive behaviour behind the sharp increase in fees being charged by private schools in the country. However, this is not the only step and a basic audit of what sort of entry and mobility barriers they are creating to command terms should be part of the scrutiny.

Ultimately, it has to be a comprehensive and integrated effort on all levels to bring a change that is mutually beneficial. Firstly, the government has to improve its governance to ensure that laws are being reviewed and, more importantly, followed. The government has set up a Private Educational Institute Regulatory Authority (PIERA) to regulate the working and fee structure of private schools but it has done exactly what all government authorities do: nothing. The government needs to take a few lessons out of the Punjab Food Authority and use its ‘authority’ to bring a sense of normalcy to the industry. As the Higher Education Commission (HEC) does for universities, it should do quality accreditation and ranking of schools on teacher profiles, facilities and fee, and make it public. Parents need to be more aware and vigilant about laws and their rights, and use them to push for their demands. The fact that according to the law only five percent of the fee can be increased and the rest needs to be passed through a legal process is what should have been taken up long ago. Parents should also form PMAs, i.e. Parents Management Associations in every school having a board of parents and school administration that discuss and deal with issues arising out of fee and quality. Private school owners need to change their attitude of arrogance and go for a win-win approach. It is understandable that the fee of a private school will always be more but it has to be rational in this era of social media where awareness levels are much higher than before and chances of hiding behind fancy school walls are minimal.

The ultimate check to curb monopolies is to increase competition. The ultimate way to increase competition is to make more schools become quality providers. The ultimate solution to making more quality providers is to bring the public schools at par with private schools, which India and Sri Lanka have managed to do. That, of course, will take time but meantime the more aware the educated segments of society, be it parents, school owners and activists, the better the chance to ensure a fair balance on education investment and its ability to enable our children to excel academically, athletically and socially.

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Top rotten

Strangely, the notion of cleaning from the top is considered non-democratic

A fish starts rotting from the head — an undeniable truth that is being shamelessly falsified by unfolding events in the country. It seems uncomfortable to state, but state we must, that all the president’s men are the president’s men and thus are just doing what the president ordains. You may catch all the lower level mice but till their chief executive officer is free, the rot will return and restart. If this is true about all leadership, and we unequivocally profess this about terrorism that hitting the top leaders is the solution, why are we afraid of stating this and following this principle in politics? What has happened in Sindh is a great step that is being lauded by the public and has political support as well. Moreover, the fact that people in the police and army are also being put on trial is even more heartening. But what remains the most disconcerting factor is not that it has not reached Punjab but the fact that the top men on whose say or permission this is happening are still scot-free. The tradition of blaming and scapegoating the men below has been a hallmark of many operations in the past that yielded no sustainable results.

Strangely, the notion of cleaning from the top is considered non-democratic. Last year, when election rigging was taken up as a main subject of protest and a record sit-in was held, nearly every analyst thought that asking for the resignation of the Prime Minister (PM) was not democratic, especially on just public demand. When examples were quoted of the west, they were rejected on the grounds that they are not valid in Pakistan. But principles of democracy state that the ultimate power is with the people regardless of the country. Take the recent case of Guatemala and its president resigning last week over a public protest against corruption. The circumstances are almost identical to Pakistan. After the end of a 36-year-old civil war in the 1990s the economy has been in the doldrums. The GDP growth rate has hovered between three to four percent with high-income inequality, increasing poverty levels and high crime rate. The reason for this dismal performance has been corruption embedded in government and state institutions. The scandal that provoked Guatemala’s political crisis is known as la linea (the line), after the telephone number that customs officials allegedly called in order to conduct their corrupt dealings. The basics of the scam are fairly simple. Corrupt customs officials in Guatemala would create fake documents to give corrupt importers a steep discount on the import duties for their goods. The corrupt importer got to keep part of the discount in exchange for paying the rest as a bribe to the corrupt officials who ran the scheme. Over time, this allegedly diverted millions of dollars in customs revenue away from the state and into the private bank accounts of corrupt officials all the way up to the president.

Finally, it was the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a UN-based commission for investigating corruption in Guatemala, that started revealing the extent of the corruption that brought a public outcry and protests in April this year. For the past five months, protesters filled Guatemala city’s central square again and again to demand that their president resign. Faces painted in patriotic blue and white, they waved their banners, chanted their slogans and bellowed their demands: the government must be held accountable to the people, corruption must end and the president must go. They achieved their goal. President Otto Perez Molina resigned after the attorney general issued a warrant for his arrest. The day before, Guatemala’s Congress had voted unanimously to strip him of his immunity so that he could be prosecuted on charges of corruption. Thus, public pressure over a period of time did bring about the downfall of decades of organized, institutional corruption. In Pakistan, we have seen clean up drives in the past, especially in the Musharraf government, but what happens is that while the people of lower ranks are caught, top leaders are allowed to escape the country on deals and then laws like National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) are made to allow them to come back with a renewed appetite for corruption.

In Pakistan, accountability normally starts at the bottom rather than the top. Most of the arrests made in Sindh are from the lowest rung on the ladder in the case of the MQM people. The trend so far is that the accused target killers are caught and a whole media story appears. These target killers name big guns in the party but the big guns are not caught due to lack of evidence. Many of the big guns then disappear from the country till the heat wears off. Babar Ghauri, whose business of illegal marriage halls is under the legal axe, is in the US and no explanation is being given of why the owners are not being prosecuted.

Similarly, Sharjeel Memon, who started this drive of illicit buildings, is himself now out of bounds. Asif Ali Zardari is holding office in Dubai and calling all his cabinet members there to hold meetings. Those who are here, like Yousaf Raza Gilani, are shown coming out of court beaming with pride and being garlanded on the legal victory of being granted bail after bail. It is baffling how Dr Asim Hussain, who is the best friend of Asif Ali Zardari and who got all those lucrative posts thanks to his friend, is now being kept in custody while the man who orchestrated, enabled and promoted him is safely sitting in Dubai issuing statements about democracy and security of this country.

Similarly, as the anti-corruption drive reaches Punjab and the Nandipur scandal unveils, the Managing Director (MD) is called in for an explanation. The PM and the ministers who were directly promoting and inaugurating the project are merely expressing their displeasure at the mismanagement that for the last two years has been reportedly losing billions of public money. In a blatantly top-led Model Town operation in which 100 people were shot, the Assistant Superintendent Police (ASP), etc, were removed while Rana Sanaullah was restored and the chief minister was given a clean chit. There has been a lot of demand for accountability across the board in all provinces, as it should be, but if it is just bottom to middle, then the top will survive, disappear and rear its ugly head again to spread its virus all the way down.

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Legalising immorality

They know lying and deceiving is wrong but see blatant liars becoming media stars and mesmerising speakers

When do you know every wrong has become right? When do you know being wrong is a quality that inspires people to do more of it? When do you know that being right is considered silly and impractical? It is when con artists, liars, defaulters and lawbreakers become role models. The very fact that Ayyan Ali was invited as a guest speaker by one of the best universities in Pakistan and students of that university ‘honoured’ her with awards and posed for selfies with her is an indication of how deep and how rotten our social and moral values have become. The media uproar resulted in a show cause notice to the students and that is about it.

The question is: how can a notorious model caught with half a million dollars become a role model for the educated youth of our country? The answer lies in the fact that what this generation of 20-year-olds sees is that the bigger the criminal you are the more rich and famous you become. This is perhaps the most dangerous trend in the country, more dangerous than the fluctuating exchange rate, more dangerous than the budget deficit and more dangerous than dengue fever. This cuts across the roots of what makes a society, a culture and a nation.

Just imagine the lives of 20-year-olds in Pakistan. Born in the 1990s they have seen the country’s steadily deteriorating development. They have seen electricity become a rare species. They have seen education standards falling. They have seen hospitals become epitomes of terrible hygiene. They have seen money losing value. They have seen going out on the streets becoming a life risking pursuit. They have seen robberies and muggings happening all around them. They have seen murderers, criminals and defaulters becoming the top people in our country. They know that education is important for success in life but see top leaders with fake degrees. They know that business needs ethics and principles but see top industrialists and businessmen indulge in tax frauds, loan defaults and breaking most rules. They know hard work is the way of life but see many people succeed without even lifting a finger. They know lying and deceiving is wrong but see blatant liars becoming media stars and mesmerising speakers. On the other hand, they see honest, hardworking people struggling and suffering, law-abiding people spending lifetimes trying to seek justice, bright, educated people waiting for jobs that go to the most undeserving.

With so much happening that should not be happening and nobody doing anything about it, they feel that success is defined by doing anything and everything and by being either above the law or being able to skirt or bend it. Ayyan Ali is just a by-product of leaders who make laws to suit their personal agendas. Laws have been deliberately made lax and selective to leave enough room for every smart lawyer to create doubt for case dismissals. The fact that the leaders of the two ruling parties have been living under severe charges of corruption and misuse of authority, and have escaped every time, is itself evidence of the non-existence of any system of accountability. That is why the military has to step in and that is why military courts have to be set up to scare the politicians. That is why political parties start crying foul the minute their corruption fortress is touched. The screaming and yelling of politician after politician for being interrogated on cases that have been dormant for years on charges that run into the billions portrays their complete disbelief on why their ‘law-proof’ system is being rocked.

Yousaf Raza Gilani was the Prime Minister (PM) who appointed Tauqir Sadiq as head of the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA), who was convicted in the Rs 82 billion scandal. When the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) wanted to hold him on the basis of his illegal appointment, Yousaf Raza simply said that since he was an ex-PM he had immunity against any such conviction. In the recent operation clean up, Yousaf Raza and Amin Faheem have again been given arrest orders, this time for the TDAP scandal. More than 70 cases related to this appeared and they were charge-sheeted in 12 of them last year. However, both Gilani and Faheem obtained bail and exemptions from appearing in hearings.

The formula for legalising immorality is very simple: buy and collude on coming into power, pass laws that create immunity against any conviction, choose heads of major institutions of accountability who are corrupt themselves or are your yes men, impede the passing of accountability laws, threaten investigators into submission, blackmail opposing parties who want to catch them by warning of spilling the beans on them. And, if need be, abscond to foreign countries through deals made with internal and foreign actors. That is what we have witnessed for the last four decades. They have done it so often and so successfully that it has become a norm. Nobody believes they will be caught and even if they are caught they will not be convicted. Thus, for the youth of this country they become aspiring role models of corruption management, deception management, rigging management, etc. They are the infallible supermen whom no law, no court and no power can dislodge.

One additional skill and talent they possess is that when their wrongs are being exposed they become the wronged people, the aggrieved party, the victimised victims, the brave saviours of democracy, the courageous custodians of the Constitution and the symbols of patriotism and integrity. Instead of embarrassment there is this outraged indignation of being subject to this targeted attack on their flawless conduct and behaviour. The ex-PM, Yousaf Raza Gilani, who has been found wanting on the biggest and the smallest of scams, is a typical example of this. From keeping a necklace donated for flood victims by the wife of the Turkish PM to billions in OGRA to awarding the Sitara-e-Imtiaz to some businessmen against gifted Prados and money, the ex-PM has been accused of all but is still not convicted. That is why, despite huge moral pressure, the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP’s) provincial commissioners refuse to resign as they wait for the Supreme Judicial Council to elongate their stay for another six months. As the saying goes, laws are like a cobweb; when a big insect falls into it, it passes right through it and when a small insect falls into it, the more it tries to get out of it, the more entangled it becomes.

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Nature killers

Metro and road projects have severely affected the normal plantation and green belts leading to an increased level of pollution and extreme weather

Killing people is murder but killing nature that results in killing people is not murder. That is why when we talk about the environment in this country it is scoffed at as a discourse suitable for developed countries. That is why the destruction of nature is hardly punishable, that is why governments pay zero attention to preserving and conserving the environment, that is why this uncontrolled degradation of nature’s balance has caused climatic havoc in Pakistan, that is why in Karachi thousands for the first time died of an unbearable heat wave and millions were made homeless due to flash floods but all this is swept under the rug by the explanation that natural calamities are all in the hands of God. That is where we go wrong as these are aided and abetted by the hands of man, bent upon destroying every safeguard provided by God to deal with these calamities. This fatalistic view that is used by the government and the people of this country to justify the continuous ruination of our natural environment is what needs to change if eroding natural bodies are to be prevented from producing reactions that cause grave damage to our very existence.

Pakistan has the highest deforestation rate in South Asia at 2.5 percent. Thus, the land covered in forest, which was supposed to be six percent, has shrunken to 2.5 percent. When forestland is changed to non-forestry use, the products and services provided by the forest such as timber, firewood, water, medicinal herbs, wildlife, carbon storage and aesthetic beauty are lost. However, aesthetics is the least of our concerns; more importantly, it is the life of humans and the life of the ecosystem that are affected. Trees are carbon sinkers and help in reducing pollution and preventing many diseases. Environment-related factors cause roughly one third of all child mortality in Pakistan, the highest in South Asia. Diseases like diarrhea and typhoid, caused by inadequate water supply, sanitation and hygiene are other significant types of environmental damage that make up about 30 percent of the cost of environmental damages. Also, when you convert agricultural land to urban land, you disturb food security.

The reasons behind this planned destruction of the environment are money, status and showmanship. Deforestation is a huge business as wood is being used to make phenomenal profits by the timber mafia, especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. This includes the involvement of two ministers who have used their positions to continue this destruction. The heartening news is that these ministers have been removed and cases are now being levelled against this conduct. Another money-spinner is the land mafia that looks at lucrative areas of agricultural land and buys it forcibly at throwaway prices and then declares these industrial zones to resell at a phenomenal value. Last year in Punjab, agricultural land in Sheikhupura district of about 12,000 kanals was declared fit for a garment city. Hundreds of dairy farmers who were earning their living were offered Rs 1.3 million in place of Rs five million (the market price), which when converted into industrial zone prices will climb to billions of rupees. Millions will be deprived of their honest living and earning due to the greed of the influential land mafia.

Even more deplorable is the royalty subservience of allowing the Saudi and Qatari princes to come hunting and killing endangered Houbara Bustards. This has gone on for years and only recently has the Supreme Court (SC) banned the special permits given to royalty for killing this rare species. A recent case in the SC stated that a prince hunted for 21 days — from January 11, 2014 to January 31– and killed 1,977 birds, while other members of his party hunted an additional 123 birds, bringing the total Bustard toll to 2,100, sources said. The plea taken by a JUI-F representative was that in return they get Rs two billion worth of projects to develop the area. Where this money goes is anybody’s guess as Balochistan has hardly seen any evidence of it.

Another very powerful reason is the desire of many politicians to make mega showmanship projects that violate all environmental guidelines. Metro and road projects have severely affected the normal plantation and green belts leading to an increased level of pollution and extreme weather. Lahore is a particular victim of Shahbaz Sharif’s obsession with brick and mortar, which has huge face value but has made Lahore one of the 10 most polluted cities in the world. After tearing apart the Ferozepur Road with the metro bus, a new signal-free corridor and Canal Road modification project is afoot. The road at three points beyond the Dharampura underpass is being widened by removing greenbelts on both sides of the canal. Civil society organisations and residents of the Lal Pul area say that the government was violating the order of the SC regarding the Canal Road modification project. River Ravi, which used to be a picnic spot, is now a sewerage pit where river life has become impossible as the toxins due to the dumping of untreated sewerage have turned it into a water deathbed.

The environment is the invisible life support that only the aware and educated understand. What is required is a long-term effort to educate children on the hazards of environmental degradation. While private schools are creating this awareness, public schools are totally devoid of this text. One initiative that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has taken to reforest the province is to make it part of the student grading system. Each child studying in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s public schools will be planting a tree and will get extra marks for it. In this way, 5.4 million children will be planting an equal number of trees in the province and will also learn the importance of preserving the ecological balance. Similar initiatives need to be adopted in other provinces as well.

The real issue is of prioritisation. The environment, like education, cannot be built as an eight-month project with concrete visible structures that can be projected on the media and also earn substantial under-the-table payoffs. Though a separate climate change ministry has been set up, it is just a ticket for ministers to go to exotic places and attend conferences. What is needed is to empower these ministries and authorities to stall any projects that fail to pass environmental standards or we will just accept this living sorrow of seeing one of the most naturally blessed and beautiful countries become a dump yard of pollutants and toxins.

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