Privacy of the individual

I am a victim of character assassination, disinformation, propaganda and defamation by so many individuals and organizations on internet. My enemies left no stone unturned to spread rumours about me, malign my character and portray me as somebody which is not even remotely like me. I remember that i could find no way to tell people that what they were saying was not true. Nobody was willing to listen to me, my family was getting embarrassed and blaming me for all the hoopla, when i had no hand in it. Clearly, somebody wanted to destroy my reputation, my dignity and my self respect. They nearly succeeded. But for my strong belief in God, I would have broken down, descended into depression. One of my "well wishers " also suggested suicide as a possible solution when i was at my lowest ebb. But then , We must all remember that God, the Almighty , most gracious, most merciful, is also the greatest Conspirator. Nobody can be smarter than him, and you can fool the whole world, but you cannot fool Him. He will see to it that justice is done through any instrument of his choosing. So i lived. And survived. through the deceit, the conspiracy, the backstabbing of seemingly close friends. When I tried clarifying my name through the print media, nobody helped me. nobody wanted to help me. The only thing that came to my rescue, where i found the freedom of expressing my thoughts, was the cyberspace. Here was a universe where all were equal and had the same rights to express themselves. No references or exploitation was a part of airing your views. And apart from my thoughts, i had so much to say about the world that I live in, our society, my work, my other passions, the causes that i believe in.Cyberspace made me free. It made so many others like me feel that they had a voice, that it could be heard, and that what they thought mattered and they had a right to express themselves rather than toeing other's lines. Cyberspace is all about individual freedom and having access to information and rights, if you are looking for them. It is the ultimate level playing field. To each his own choice of using the internet, which we may not like or dislike, but we have no right to take away their freedom or right of expression. If we are in the right, we do not need to be afraid of what they say. we just need to change the narrative. But now the government wants to pass the Cybercrime Bill which has no room for the concept of privacy of the inividual. Such intrusions on the basic human rights of people should be weeded out of the Bill. dissent is the essence of democracy and personal freedoms should be guarded jealously. I and so many persons like me have a voice. It should not be gagged. ]

Development & the people

Today I bought a book by Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate -Economist. He was an inspiration to me to study development economics and poverty. The name of the book is Development As Freedom. The book evoked so many memories of my experiences in the field and of the time when I work with the people-- the time I feel happiest as well as sad. I feel happy when i come into contact with normal people, all sorts of people, when I observe them and listen to them, and the most when I am able to help them. But I feel sad when I look at the squalid existence of the majority of the people of Pakistan, their eyes without hope , given to fatalism, unaware and not confident of their rights because they have never been allowed to aspire so much by the ruling classes, of course I am a member of it, which makes the burden of guilt even greater. Our people lack trust in the system, the bureaucracy, the ruling classes, whoever they might be, they see the State as the enemy still after half a century of supposed independence. Our rural poor have all the qualities so vividly described of colonized people by Albert Camus's The Wretched of The Earth. That book was an eye opener for me when i read it while a trainee officer in the Elitist DMG campus. He was describing Algerians but the description was of the average Pakistani.They are sharp, they are always ready to get around authority to get their due , however little they get it. they lie ,cheat and derive pleasure from wrondoing.why is that? I am reminded of my visit to Australia in 2005 when I observed that their zoo animals and birds would approach people with trust in their eyes, hoping for love and food, in stark contrast to pakistani wildlife in zoos, which runs in the opposite direction or attacks when it sees humans. Expectations are always conditioned by experience. So it is with our people. Development is direly required all over the country and is the means of a better life experience for people, affecting their outlook and expectations from life. But we the ruling classes have made development another tool for blackmail, subjugation and politics. It is bartered for allegience, obeisance and control, and many times used for vendetta against rivals. By linking development to politics, we punish a person for not voting for a certain gentleman and voting for another. He sees his side of the colony or city languish and fall into disrepair, without basic amentities and maintenance, while the rivals side prospers, develops and blooms. Then development is done piecemeal, as sugar drops to a child from time to time, a street here, a road there, not resolving issues in a holistic way. To be sure, if you give something to somebody completely,why would they be at your door all the time? Therefore, development has become a means of control, not for serving the people. The traditional politician would expect that giving a job to a man would ensure gratitude in that family for the next two generations. I shudder to use the word change for obvious reasons, but the government, who ever heads it, needs to rethink how we treat our people, and how we perceive them. Development as freedom in Pakistan is a faraway dream. Choosing development projects independently is unheard of especially in rural areas and smaller cities, where problems glare at one in the face but are not solved due to biases and local vested interests .In such scenarios the people turn to the bureacracy to maintain balance, and respect us for it if we do. But our ability to maintain balance is fast eroding.Nevertheless, an independent way of prioritizing development is necessary. Political mileage can be a part of it but it should be fair and unbiased, not the only consideration. It would be a fine balancing act given competing interests after scarce resources,but we should give it a try. We should give our people a better standard of living not as a favour, but as their constitutional and human right.

Rain in the Capital

I was in love with rain since childhood. Befitting then that I ended up in a city where it rains more on average than any other major city in Pakistan. But here we have a different way of dealing with rain than in my native Lahore. We do not celebrate, like they do, but merely acknowledge, with a nod of our heads, a look out of the window, and carry on regardless. Most of the residents in this city are pursuing very important tasks which have implications on a national level, so we just give the rain a look and go on with our routines. It is a rarified atmosphere that we live in here, far removed from common people and their problems, and not a very good sense of the ground realities prevail here as far as the bureaucracy is concerned. The pace is slower, not a great sense of urgency apart from some offices. There is a far greater opportunity of making a difference, if one wants to. But we lack freshness, new perspectives, out of the box thinking. Islamabad needs waking up. It needs to become more frantic, more desparate to find the twentififth hour during the day to get things done. I wish we could do that. But why would the best officers come here to work, who want to or could make a difference. Living and working is difficult for younger officers here. The Pak Secrtariat is falling to pieces while CDA looks the other way. Authority is diffuse among ministries and the buck doesnt seem to stop anywhere. Each day humans wake up and set out to create order out of the perpetual chaos that surrounds them, we are supposed to start afresh each day to keep chaos from taking over. Yet it is difficult to discern order from chaos here. It is quiet, beautiful, peaceful. Still. Yet chaos prevail. In an ivory tower, the pulse of the people is hard to hear. One is surrounded by courtiers, who say little and only what their agenda allows. But common people expect us to better their lives. Can we be sure to deliver through our myopic thinking and set systems, and predictable schemes and strategies? The system of doing things needs to be changed. Im not sure if reform is a big priority of the federal government. It is direly needed if we are to move forward. We could start by making life easy for the staff and downsizing. Ministries restructuring is great and welcome. Downsizing would be a bigger, more difficult task. But how and why we do things should also make sense and be more transparent. Right now it doesnt. Some people think Im too outspoken for a government servant. But what is new in what I say? We all know about these issues but choose to look the other way. I think i need to clarify...These are my views, not necessarily my own personal experiences. Hope to provoke thoughts only.

Do we need public doles?

Was not away but too preoccupied with my thoughts to write..when things upset me more than usual it makes me physically ill or atleast not able to express myself. I have been reading the Indus Saga by Aitzaz Ahsan, which the author was very kind to autograph for me, since I have made the ommission of not reading it till now, which is bad but not surprising since i have not done a lot of what i should have done..The book is indeed absorbing and thought provoking. It brings up again and again the static nature of our societal existence. Ours is a society designed to maintain the status quo and make sure that no body gets out of the shackles that we put them in. It is a landscape where each day rises and sets like the one before and the individual feels that nothing can change, nothing will change. This is why our people are listless and without hope of a better tomorrow through their own efforts. They just think something might change through divine intervention, but not with their own hands. For centuries we have existed like this. This state of affairs has given us a present where mothers committ suicide because they cannot pay for the fees of their children. I cannot but forget the incident in Makkah colony,Lahore in 2008, where a young woman killed herself because she was dejected at having no money for her children's education. I was a young Assistant Commissioner then, and the then PM was to arrive and visit the bereaved family. The streets had been cleaned because of the VIP visit. I entered the small door of a building where the family of four lived in one room. the lady had to arrange her kitchen things in the corridor outside the room, which was a thoroughfare for the other residents of the building. I read her last letter before her death, in which she had written why she was dying, but had written ,curiously, that she wanted to be buried next to her mother, and that nobody should have any objection to that. Needless to say, it was an allusion to her spouse and in laws, which showed her inner loneliness and feeling of helplessness even at the moment of death. I could never forget that room, the children and the kitchen things in the corridor. I have seen countless scenes of helplessness and despair on the faces of common men and women. Years have passed, i have tried on different positions to help as many poeple as i could, but each day I wake up to the feeling of not being equal to the gigantic task, of the dire and pressing need for social reform. who is going to do that and how, how are the religious and community elders going to react to it if some section of society rises up to take its rights, as it should, I do not know. The government, tries to give out money to solve these problems. They think giving alms, the traiditional way of helping the poor, will keep working. But it is not working. Pakistan is one of the most charitable nations in the world they say. But faced with the current problems, it is not working. The only way is to empower people to be equal, to give them means to earn and help themselves.It is true that we take money through taxes and spend on poor, but we should spend on systems rather than cash schemes. All these different schemes that are being launched and the financial support they offer are going to be swallowed up by the parasitical structure of our society, where the earning members are hostages to the demands of their families. they will get votes, but not solve the real issues of our society. Our young people are without idealism and dreams because they know that in their lives, not much will change despite their hard work. What we require is not more waseela e haq, but an inspired and motivated nation with more awareness of their rights as individuals and systems to protect those rights. We need more social justice, more protection of the individual. For example, centres for battered women rather than jail like daarul amaan where one can only enter through the court. The society rejects the individual and supports the imposition of collective will over that of a person. We need laws that are enforced. We need equal opportunities, not alms. If you give alms, all you get are beggars. We end up begging at the national level, because people are not self sufficient at the grassroots level and live mostly on the charity of family or strangers or the government and cannot pay taxes to the government. It is a joke not to be able to control prices and to be content at having "Sasta Bazaars"We need an enabling environment, not more public doles.

Women's Lib

Gloria Steinem I am not. Bra burner I am not either. Then how do I justify being a feminist. Most of the women felt, in the nascent days of Women's lib that going to the extreme and casting off every shackle of suppression which is designed to make us more subservient and therefore more acceptable to men, was the need of the hour. Perhaps it was so, and looking back 50 or 60 years ago, it is evident that women of the world have come a long way. Now atleast in the urban areas of Pakistan even, it is not an anomaly for a woman to work, go out alone or drive, do chores alone or be the primary breadwinner of the family. The only shackles that remain are the attitudes, and the harrassment which is experienced by women at the hands of men in authority or in any dominant position. For that the governement has to work hard and create an enabling environment for women to feel comfortable and secure in their day to day life. It is not a very difficult thing to do. I must appreciate the work that the Punjab governement has done in terms of legislation, women's package, the recent activation of women's ombudsman, a longstanding dream, and now the working women's endowment fund.The othe provinces and the centre are far behind. These are good measures and practical ones too, if only actually translated into the reality of day to day life. Another thing which the government needs to build and strengthen are the women's shelters and homes. however, it is imperative that we add to their design trauma centres where a battered girl can take refuge, get treatment and get psychological counselling. one problem with the existing homes is that today if a woman needs to escape from an abusive husband, she will not be allowed entry into the home. We must allow easier access to homes for battered women. The government should rise above the fears that the lawahiqeen will come and claim the girl/woman. it is time we treat women as individuals entitled to their own will, rather than as possessions of the family. One thing that i like is that now that so many things about women's empowerment have become the norm, it is no longer considered necessary for a woman to discard her feminine traits to achieve emancipation. I do not think it is necessary for a woman to be rude or gruff to be strong and assert her independence. one needs to be clear in one's mind about ones values and firm about them. obviously, resorting to a little bit of aggression where it is required, but i would prefer the cool confidence of an educated lady, rather then the harsh fury of reactionary activists. We need not compete with men. we are evidently better:) but we are different and both sexes do well to accept their differences and learn to interact accordingly. The men also need to learn that assertivenes is not necessarily a challenge to their manliness. Women need to be polite but firm about what they do or do not want, even if they are in a position of authority. it works even without resorting to looking or behaving like a man. If one is better than others in work, one earns respect the right way. and the best answer for harassment is: name and shame. the rest falls in place. women just need to keep their self confidence and sense of self worth alive. If I am confident of who i am, I dont need to insult anybody to prove myself. but i do not need to take something below my dignity either. I hope that graceful but firm, the women keep coming into public life and change our society, by changing themselves first.We wont get anywhere by competing for men.

Ashes to ashes

Images of the funeral pyre of Pakistan's one the most respected members of the judiciary, Rana bhagwandas is evocative. Made out of dust, we return to it, some through decomposition after burial, some after cremation turn to ashes and dust. Thus we leave our earthly dress and our real self, the spirit rises above to its creator. I heard a few people on tv giving statements that Rana bhagwandas had written naats, that his study of the religion of Islam was very wide. Do wd really need to make such statements as Muslims to justify our presence at the funeral of a Hindu ? He was, I guess, after all, an infidel, so it follows that we should be suitably contrite at our presence or association to him even in death. I felt strange and bad. How would an overseas Pakistani feel if he died in Britain and a Christian friend says, you know, he had written some hymns in honour of Jesus . I wonder what religion do spirits have when they appear before god. Isn't he supposed to be one? It is this unwillingness to accept those who are different and those who are not like us, who believe in some other values, that is the basis of all cruelty , it is this intolerance. Before we nab the Taliban We need to kill this little extremist hiding within our own selves, who wants to hate, who wants to brand, who wants to punish the other. Who wants to impose his own will on others and who wants revenge from all those people who have what he doesn't . Extremism is the hallmark of every closed and inward looking society. The more we purify it and create uniformity , the more extremist it will become. We lose sight of the goodness in others and concentrate on what is wrong . To each god has given his own destiny. Nobody can change it. But how can an infidel be good, not seeing our own sins that we commit everyday and then take refuge in the hypocrisy of telling ourselves that we are Muslims , so it follows that wd are right and justified in our sins . I would like to remember a human being only as he or she was, a good human being or bad one. That should be the only criteria for rememberence and is I'm sure the only criteria for gods mercy and benevolence

burey halaat

Somebody posted on my blog, that i should not write about my personal life. Curious idea. I wonder why anybody would object to know that i am happy? I write about sadness and nobody says dont write about that. So why this nervousness about happiness? I like to share some aspects of my life but not all, but media has not been so kind to me. which aspect of my personal life was not discussed on the same medium? At that time nobody objected, they just enjoyed. so i say, physician, heal thyself. It is better that i say what i want to say myself, rather than letting people indulge in conjecture and rumour mongering. I have always felt that each day is a new start, I do not believe in looking back in anger. Otherwise, how much more of my "personal life" i could have written about! those who would do anything to keep their hold on power and privilege, demean themselves, go to any length to hang on to their ticket to "success' and be called " success stories" when all they can boast of is one shameful act after another in an attempt to hang on. But what is the point of mentioning people like that. I would rather talk about somebody I truly respect and love. Someone who has healed my wounds and made me believe in goodness. Somebody I look up to, despite the fact that i would sometimes tease. Who makes things happen that others only talk about. Who is not led by fears and complexes. Such a person is worthy of mention, worthy of association, worthy of affection. every woman needs someone to adore. Yet this is not all on my mind today. My daughter asked me today, why does Pakistan have these burey Halaat ( adverse circumstances/ conditions)? I am at a loss what to say to her. I don’t know how many of my generation have an answer to this question and how many, like me, have to struggle with a response. . We are not the generation who oversaw these developments in our national life, but we were witnesses to it, and now are coming to a stage where we can make a difference in society. We are the parents, the middle managers, the young bureaucrats getting to senior positions, the young politicians chairing some standing committee or as in KP, heading a provincial department. The old guard is still strong in Punjab and Sindh and of course the centre. But her question is still difficult to answer. I can only think of two reasons which our earlier generations have brought the matters to the present scenario. We as a society have been insecure, selfish and irresponsible. We have thought about our own gains and not cared about what happened to the person next door, as long as we were in the pink. Then a peculiar tendency that at least I have noticed is that people will spend no energy on their own betterment but will spend double the amount of energy on pulling others down. We are afraid to compete fairly, so we try to “cut corners” and deviously win. The ego reigns supreme. Not values. I sometimes joke to people who come to me to help them pull down others that you want to make sure that everybody remains in the mud and anybody who tries to get out of it, should not succeed. As long as all are in the mud, we achieve our societal targets. This is how our society maintains the status quo, and we as a nation lose out on progress and success. Irresponsibility, on the other hand, I cannot explain. We have this general tendency of being so relaxed about things, so laid back, probably stemming from our sufi roots but more probably due to the majority being unlettered and the general attitude of ignorance which prevails in our society. An unlettered man doesn’t know much about his universe, and life is a series of incidents to him which he cannot explain rationally, and thus explains through resignation to the will of God. While I am not discounting the will of God, much of our mess is of our own making, which god might be amused at but would not like to help us out of it as all our effort is to stay in the mud. Lets see when we have enough confidence to get out of it and chart a different course.