Education and the Nazim

wajahat #32 agree that a lot of NGOs are fakes, and that is why it is important to donate money only if you know that it is being put to good use. Many Pakistani NGOs (like DIL) will link your donations to individual schools, and you can go and visit those schools. While dedication can go a long way, I dont think dedication alone works with public schools - the most dedicated administrators find themselves helpless when it turns out that the teachers who dont show up were appointed at the safarish of some provincial minister. We need a system that creates the right incentives. And it does appear that by making school administration accountable to locally elected officials there is a strong incentive created (see yogiraj`s post #36 where he relates his experience in India).

veeresh #34 those seem like great prices for books. I get an even better price in the US - free. from the library. :-) and now with google and the internet, great books are becoming like air and water - very valuable and totally free.
btw you can get good deals on the pavements in pakistani cities too. this is free enterprise at work, no cartels here. check it out next time you are in pakistan (which hopefully you will like to do).

dost mittar #35 the man behind the freeing up of PC import duties in Pakistan that you mention was the younger brother of a famous figure in Pakistan (Sardar Abdur Rab Nishtar). He successfully argued for lifting these duties in the 1980`s, and it has been that way since as far as i know.

yogiraj #36 thanks for your personal account, and agree that the Nazims need to be empowered. On your question: delivery of education has been devolved from the provinces to the districts, while revenue collection remains a provincial matter. District governments have started collecting some revenue - tolls on local roads - but not much more. Property tax collection (and I would be glad to have this corrected) remains with the provincial governments, with about 80% given to districts and the rest retained for provincial oversight. Property tax rates are set by the provinces in consultation with the district. So, one can see some areas of tension between the two levels, and how provinces could tighten the purse strings on the district.

Here is a link to a district website http://www.gulshantownkarachi.gov.pk that I think is quite well designed (although still quite basic), and provides their budget online as well as other useful things for the citizen, like government forms. considering that citizens had to waste an entire day sometimes, in addition to begging and bribing clerks for these blank forms, it is nice to see them available for printing on the web.

kaurasach #37 I hope so too (that you have a pleasant visit to Pakistan). Try to go in good weather (october-march, and avoiding december/january if you are going to the colder parts).

ahmedzai #38 aakhir Jay sahib kay sath mehmaannawazi bhi lazmi hai. :-)

gujjubania #40 thanks for writing. india`s high literacy rate is indeed something to be admired.

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#38 by ahmadzai on May 7, 2004 11:43am PT

Please don`t break the good neighbor`s heart. At least you should appreciate the entertainment value in Jay`s comments. :) I don`t think he offends anyone here because no one takes him too seriously. I was amused when he tried to drag Nadeeem Farooq Paracha into a Pakistan-India debate and got a well-deserved treatment. Thanks.

Tauheed Saheb, himmat hay aap kee. Aap is jay the passive gay kee post parh laitay hain.

:-)

tahmed32,

Not joking. Used to walk four mile to and fro every day just to go to school every day.

Never thought it was fun when I walked. Hated it most of the times. Had fun once in a while. Now I know.

That was ``norm`` in a wadi (sub-dehat in Maharashtra) . No. Not walking, but going to school. One had to. I remember (now) my mom getting up 2 hours earlier so that I could carry some food. Whatever she could afford.

Just a question. Will the locals get authority to collect taxes so that they control and run the schools? Mine was. It was called a municipal school. All the people in the near by semi-town used to pay property taxes so that the Municipality (my spelling) could run the school. There was no fee.

Locals should be empowered with ``authority``. Exclusively in whatever area agreed. No interference. That would really work.

Hope that is what is happening in Pakistan. Empower your Nazims. Trust me. They are fathers and mothers. They will do simply best for their children, just like my mom did.

Yogiraj Patil

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veeresh:
One of the things that the Musharraf govt. has encouraged is the free import of used personal computers; consequently there is cheap and easy availability of PCs there. I know, I used an Internet Cafe in Islamabad, and all the PCs were old, some with East European keyboards.

tahmed32 #31 - amongst the many untold stories of resurgence in parts of India have been the easy availability of ``clone/grey`` assembled computers, cheap software/OS . . . and dumping/import by the container load of second hand books into the country as ``paper scrap`` for the pulp industry . . . actually a lot of the scrap paper was this vast variety of books of all sorts . . . as a result as recently as the mid-80s, good 1000/- rupee coffee table books were 50/- on the pavement each and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was going at 3-5 rupees a paperback . . .

methinks there is great scope for something like this in Pakistan . . . but then, I didn`t know that all the bookshops in I`Bad were part of the same family/cartel.

Oh well.

veeresh #16: This bookreading habit is indeed something to be valued. As bilal points out, in Pakistan we too have a tradition of second hand bookshops (many of which open for business only on weekends, presumably this being a second source of income) and you will find booksellers on streetcorners. I myself spent many sunday mornings in rawalpindi going through the second hand bookshops.

#30

60% of these NGOs are positive organisations, yet 40% are basic fads run by celebrity or rich wives which tends to get abandoned, this obviously is a rash figure. The point therefore is that the structure has to come from within the govt, not handed over to some NGO. You put some dedicated and honest people incharge of the publiuc school system, allocate the right funds and resources and you will see a turn around in years. This is where the buck stops, this is where the priorities clash. Unfortunately this is also the case for most everything....

urstruly #18 it would have been nice to have a national debate, but it is still vastly more democratic than the system of DCs it replaced.

kaurasuch #19 your pakistani friends seem to be real losers. hope you meet better individuals from pakistan some day. better yet, visit pakistan someday and maybe you will be pleasantly surprised.

jang #27 i think it is generally accepted that local governments should be accountable to the population they serve. Not to their civil service superiors sitting in provincial or national capitals. And the evidence of this is present in one country after another all over the world. I hope you dont seriously challenge this assumption. There are of course important issues of checks and balance between different layers of government that remain to be fully resolved in Pakistan, imho. As for the name ``nazim``, it may sound strange to people in India not used to the term, but it simply means adminstrator in urdu and as such is readily understood by all. The term patwari that you suggest is already taken (by the man in charge of land titles), and munshi refers to an accountant as I understand. Never heard of sarpanch before - what does it mean?

Wajahat #20 It was interesting reading about what you heard from the Nazims in Sindh. The provincial government seem dead-set to create difficulties for the Nazims. This is the same as in NWFP, where the maulvis in the provincial government tried to put the Nazims in a subordinate role and thus kill the devolution of power to local governments. It is ironic that Nazims in NWFP then threatened resignations and general musharaff had to intervene in this conflict between two levels of elected officials! A similar confrontation seems to be emerging in Sind. The one and very significant bright spot appears to be the panjab where, as I understand, the two levels of government are cooperating because there are no serious party differences.

This struggle of the Nazims against provincial politicians is clearly a major battle that is now underway on the path to democracy. And no doubt the army is another major hurdle, as you say.

Under the circumstances, it is probably best to seek success of the local governments in a few key areas where they have a chance of contributing something positive. And I think what is really important at this stage is areas of service delivery - education, health, local transport infrastructure. Public school staff for example, have never felt accountable to the local people (often being appointed at the behest of some provincial politican in Lahore or someplace). Another option of course is to simply hand over public schools where there is no teaching being done to the NGOs (which has also been done in a few cases, I understand).

His Excellency #15 You raise some key issues on the subject.

You write ``1) When you say that local self-governments have improved public schools in their locality, are you referring to urban localities or rural localities? ``

I assume it is both rural and urban areas, and as I understand the evidence is still anecdotal (as I mention in the article). So I cant answer this question. Your next question I think helps provide an answer...

You write ``2) In many remote areas of NWFP, the local maulvis and maliks (landlords) do not want public schools because they will weaken their hold on the people. The Nazims also rely on the support of these maliks for getting elected. Has the local self-government system addressed this potential clash of interests? ``

Very good point. That is why I think (as I mention in my post to wajahat) why it is important to have the NGO schools (from initiatives like DIL and SOS) continue to operate: they can then take up the slack in districts where local governments also fail to deliver services (as is bound to happen in some cases).


``3) The provincial elections are held on party-basis, but local bodies elections are not. As a result, the party that wins a heavy mandate is unable to implement its agenda because the Nazims may resist their political agenda. Doesn`t the local government system encroach upon the mandate of the elected provincial government? ``

The mandates of the three levels of government are constitutionally defined and as such any concerns of encroachment would be a matter for the courts to decide in a mature democracy. In practice, I think the central government will play a key role in the years ahead in drawing the lines between the Nazims and the provincial politicians. And of course, even the constitutional arrangements are not written in stone. For example (to take a seemingly extreme case), one could even envisage Pakistan having only two levels of government: federal and local. (this model works in Thailand with its 30 or 40 ``provinces`` quite well, eg.).

``4) If we want to strengthen the Nazims, shouldn`t we make Police and district administration subservient to the Nazim (instead of Provincial government)? ``

An important question. There is clearly room for greater accountability of the police to the population they serve (or supposedly serve) in Pakistan. But, as I wrote to wajahat, we may have to satisfy ourselves for now by watching the local governments demonstrate success in a few key areas of service delivery. Then, hopefully, a few years down the road they would be in a strong position to demand more control over the police.

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