Education and the Nazim

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.

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:
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.

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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

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

:-)

#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.

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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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I share Jay’s and Urstruly’s skepticism of this nazim business. It looks good on paper … but will eventually not yield much … is my guess. It`s only a matter of time when someone outsmarts this ``neat little scheme for local governance`` … and it will be business as usual.

Commenting on gujjubania’s post (#40) … as for Pakistan’s literacy rates … I have heard two very different numbers: one number pegs it around 27% … and the other … around 8%. The difference is due to varying definitions of literacy.

Pak government insists that anyone who can read one line of newspaper and sign his name, is literate. This yields the higher literacy rate of 27%. UNO standard however is more stringent … and results in literacy rate of about 8% (I still grapple with this low number ... ).

Comments?

tahmed32 - here is my favourite smoking versus reading theory - both support the paper industry no doubt but in addition the tobacco is good for you lobby kicks in too . . . so smoking is provided as a very cheap alternative to reading . . . and a smoke non-bidi costs 50 paise in Pakistan . . . I think there is a great case for expat Pakistanis to buy ``scrap/return/old edition/used`` books in bulk and just dump them in their home town/village . . . yes the pavement used book seller concept does very well and just needs encouragement, I used to love to watch bored cops on duty in Delhi and Bombay picking up books at random, and there was/is this thing called ``Rapidex English Speaking Course`` which was like a 300-400 page book in English + Hindi or English + vernacular . . . it works . . . so good luck . . . hope the Mullahs don`t destory the concept though . . .

The books printed in India are five times cheaper than those printed in Pakistan. The high prices of books – along with lack of book-reading culture – put books beyond the reach of ordinary people. Despite the recent bonhomie, I don’t think that Pakistani government has allowed the imports of books/magazine from India. More expensive European and American publications with their off-putting prices are easily available though.

Perhaps the government should lift this ban (not to mention the ban on Indian TV channels and movies) for the good of its people.