Mystic Writing Pad

Pakistan losing its fight against hunger

2011-08-28T05:48:00.000-07:00

Food security in Pakistan has taken two different dimensions during the last six years. It has gone from malnutrition and lack of natural access to the basic amenities of life to abject haplessness after disasters, earthquake in 2005 and then floods 2009. Man made disasters emanating from terrorism and war on terror made people leave their homes and hearths to get displaced within their own country, primarily KPK and FATA; commonly known as Internally Displaced People (IDPs).
Defining hunger and categorizing it into plausible words is not going to help in the downward spiral Pakistan is in. Hunger and lack of subsistence is a traditional, historical problem in this land. As Gandhi once said that the world has enough to feed its inhabitants, Pakistan has enough to feed its people. The rotten feudalism inherited from earlier monarchies and then the British colonialists has kept majority of the Pakistani populace mal-nourished, under privileged, and kept a political system in place that segregates most of the people in this country out of the decision making process. Thus, inequality, lack of opportunity, and injustice. This is a ready recipe for exploitation of the most by a privileged few. It ingrains fear of the powerful, which, in turn, keeps the powerful well entrenched.
Structural food insecurity is what we call the looming large hunger in the country. This is the mother of all evil in the Pakistani society. Dependence of the tenets on the landowners for every morsel they take makes them incapable of any struggle for democracy, freedom, equality, or social justice. Famous revolutionary Urdu Poet Habib Jalib (1928-93) puts it poignantly into his many verses. One of them saying, ”Whenever I ponder upon the reasons for apathy in my environ, I reach the a single conclusion: slavery going back into many centuries is the cause of social apathy.” This is very much in sinc with Frantz Fenon’s idea of Internalization. Here internalization doesn’t have a racial colour. It is rather a feeling of inferiority in front of the ruling elite, the masters, of accepting the state of life as fate, something irrefutable.
When this internalization takes its roots into the socio-cultural structure of the society, the political will for a righteous social order based upon equality dies down. And it is at this point that the “slaves begin kissing their shackles”. Structural/historical poverty is strengthened by poverty coming out of malpractices in governance, like price hikes, hoarding of edibles, and so on, as well as natural catastrophes like earthquakes and disasters. Pakistan has seen many since 2005, besides the menace and terrorism and the ensuing displacement. Thus, the country has a horrible share of man made and natural disasters within an extremely corrupt political system.
Last year’s flood affected people are facing the new rains under the same roofless settings with no food to swallow and least clothes to cover their bones. And all this is happening amid tall claims of national and international organizations, NGOs, and naturally the Pakistani government’s claims of spending a fortune to help these people. Any recent media presentation, just a scratch on the surface, will lay bare the truth, the ugly truth of people being left in the lurch. A recent program on AVT Khyber, the only Pashto TV network (August 26th, 2011; 2200 hrs,) interviewed a number of flood-affected families from Charsadda, a town at 20 minutes drive from Peshawar, shows how miserable life has become for these families who were below the poverty line even before the floods last year. The respondents authenticated the sorry truth that corruption, nepotism, and apathy has taken the better of Pakistani society. That the people running relief organizations are running the show to fill their own pockets, to reward their friends and relatives as well as people with political connections, and are least interested in even thinking about the hapless families reeling under abject poverty right in front of them. Food and money has been taken away from them after being brought to these places (since this is usually the condition for such deliveries) and then being distributed among those who already have enough, while the needy remain hungry spectators, forced to beg for their daily subsistence in nearby cities, Peshawar being the nearest big town.
“We used to live well, had a house of our own, had three meals a day, and could buy clothes for the family. It is not far. It is nearby. Flood took it all away.” “I am living in this small tent, where it rains more than outside (pointing to the little tent, where hardly a single person could crawl in). They gave us nothing. I am forced to go with my small kid to beg for a day’s meal,” narrates a middle aged bearded man. He starts to sob while telling his story. “I can only get 100 or 200 Rupees after being humiliated all day long with my little son in Peshawar. People despise me; say nasty things in front of my child. I don’t have any other option. Now the kids are asking for new clothes, because eid is coming up. We live on alms. But it was last year. People helped during the heat of the moment. I tell my kids that whatever I could get, we barely get a meal out of it. Now if someone comes forward to give us more, we might be able to buy some clothes. Look at what I am wearing. He pointed to his shalwar and kameez, both different sizes and colours. The government is nowhere.” He stars wailing loudly,” May Allah burn all the powerful in government in hell. I am a Pakistani. I am born here and will die here. I have done everything in my prowess to serve my country, but nobody is bothered about me and others like me.”
Another family consisting of old and ailing parents and their teenage sons and daughters were living in a traditional sugar mill, a small room where local sugar from sugarcane is produced in a tiny mudroom. The old woman couldn’t walk, the old man crying while not being in any better shape than his wife. The young lads sitting in dismay while the mother and father narrating their plight. “They just take the rations from right in front of us and give it away to undeserving people. I ask my boys to go and ask for it, but they don’t. ‘Allah is watching. These people (NGOs getting the supplies from WFP) have humiliated us so many times that there is no use going in for it anymore.’ “When they go out to find work, there isn’t any. We just don’t know what to do.” The old woman sitting in the cot is too weak to even walk a few steps. She has a small pouch containing some cheap medicine. “I can’t walk. These are the drugs someone donated to me. I don’t know what are these for, but I take them. I went myself to get some ration. There were young and strong men and women who pushed me back all the time. I couldn’t even get the chance to look at the food items.”
These are no isolated incidents. It is all over. Families in Punjab and Sindh are under the open sky with little children walking naked without any food for days. Just a glimpse into the TV and one finds misery all over. The government, as usual, is trying to get hold of the political give and take by forming (and breaking) alliances to control Karachi. In Karachi the people are dying of bullet wounds and torture and also out of poverty. Poverty is no lesser factor in the big cities than in the rural backwaters, the militancy ridden border areas, as well as the displaced people waiting for the misery to end. A recent prime minster Gillani visit became a public relations fiasco when immediately after his departure the people started fighting for the food he brought to distribute for the camera flashes. One can go on and on citing examples. As one comedy show very cynically puts it on Geo TV: “everything is getting costlier during Ramadan. Prices are skyrocketing. But we still have one very rare commodity getting cheaper every passing day. It is human life in Pakistan.” This is the bitter, sad, but real truth of Pakistan.
Pakistani majority’s downwards spiral into poverty needs no statistics, no reports. It is not an issue to be discussed. It is a historical reality in this unfortunate land. The problem is not poverty per se. Poverty exists everywhere on earth, because “the world has enough to feed all men, but not enough to satisfy even one man’s greed”. The problem is Pakistani state and society’s inability to the curb the ever growing manifestations of newer forms of poverty. We haven’t been able give home to the earthquake’s affected people after almost 6 years, despite getting support, alms, and charity from every nook and corner of the world. IDPs remain hapless till date. People ruined by floods still remain under the harsh skies, with the new monsoon catching them in their homeless abodes.
The inability neither to find a solution to historical poverty nor the ever-happening man made and natural disasters is the real problem. Nobody is ready to deal with the problem by looking the monster in the eye. Unless and until we develop the genius to look into the social structure for immediate, mediate, and long-term solutions for poverty, things are never going to improve. Petty politics couldn’t feed empty stomachs. It only fuels the fires of hatred and anarchy.

Social Media: Is There A Pakistani Spring In The Making

2011-06-30T22:17:00.000-07:00

I often wonder how the generation changed in Pakistan. How do people younger to me live their lives? What is the motivation and what are their pastimes, how do they make sense of the life cycle? There are naturally many many reasons. One can't just compartmentalize life like inanimate matter. To make it simple I look for the "instruments of identity", something very crucial for young men and women. I will narrow it down to the educated population of young Pakistan. Here I face the digital divide. What severs me from the younger people is their communication advantage. Cell phones, Media, the new media like Facebook and Twitter.
These young men and women have a very global platform for the formation of their identity. In good old days we used to say, "if you don't have good enough friends in the immediate environ, look for wiser, ageless friends, read books. We used to read books. Then we started watching television and got into the world of 24/7 TV, the breaking news syndrome, the soup operas, and the replication of cultural formats through imitation and interaction.
But this is not the end of it. The newest identity instruments are the interactive social media. There is a lot of talk about the potential of this social media to transform the transitional societies. The recent developments in the Islamic world beginning with the unrest in Iran a couple of years earlier and heightening in the present day turmoil in the Middle East harkens for a realistic analysis of the role of this highly trumpeted new savoir. The Arab Spring has entered into The Winter, but the euphoria has yet to be analyzed.
While talking about Pakistan the first and foremost question is about the present usage of the social media. This should also be put within the context of the number of users and then their usage. The country has dipping literacy rates, sprawling poverty, and problems like access to Internet. Even electricity is an elusive phenomenon in this country for the last many years, let alone its dependent instruments like Internet.
This makes Facebook and Twitter a privilege. There could easily be two views about it. One it is pastime of the rich, and two, it is pastime of those who are educated, or urban, or at least have access to the Internet. Unlike mobile phone, it is not a peoples’ gadget. In fact, both the ideas are true, but the latter bears more weight than the former. Internet is cheap and so are computers in the Pakistani market. So, what you need is access. In small towns and villages young men and women are surfing on their cell phones. So, the cell phone revolution has taken technology quite a few steps further. Although FB and twitter options are not available on Blackberries and cell phones in Pakistan (or they come and go), one can always access the email account to see the messages on the social media and enjoy the colourfulness of the page whenever there is access. Although Blackberry access is limited to post paid accounts, Internet surfing could easily be done on prepaid ones. Almost everyone has more than one pre paid sims. The cheaper Chinese cell phones with BB functions as well as lowering of the prices of the branded ones gives boost to the number of users.
Now technologically speaking access to Internet is possible to more people across the financial border than it is widely believed. But this theoretical reality is challenged by another factor, namely education. Yes, from a financial and theoretical perspective it is possible for everyone having a cell phone to avail Internet and, in turn, the social media. But in reality one needs enough education to use and operate the social media. Access is also limited to urban centres and the social media is not offered on simple surfing. This takes the real fun out of the whole socialisation paradigm. The social media are primarily fun media. In every corner of our present day world it began as entertainment. People enjoyed the chats, the pictures, and the gossip; and then like everything new getting matured entered into the phase of development. This phase of organizing social opinion of getting an alternative platform for debate is not the very essence of social media, but is, in fact, the outcome of user fatigue after the fun gadget loses its fun charm.
The question that comes to ones mind immediately is about the usage of the social media by the ones who have the luxury to use it. They use it as a pastime. This is the most common answer one gets. The issue of preference of FB over Twitter is the more self-presentation options the former provides than the latter. There is a group of people, journalists mainly, who prefer Twitter to FB. These are mostly managers or administrators. They follow the celebrities, other channels, and most of the international media on Twitter. “It doesn’t need to request for friendship. In fact, there is no friendship on Twitter. You just share things,” said one journalist.
But for the common user, the educated, young it is interaction, looking for partners and loving gossip, FB is more attractive. “One can post photos, have a long chat on a single post, also has the option of chatting with individuals while posting on the page.” The question of turning the tide is an important one to consider. Namely, is it possible to turn the gossip and chat box into a platform for democracy? Potentially, the answer is yes. Practically, it is not in sight. The moment of happening is not known. The direction is not towards human rights, discourse on immediate, regional, or global issues, and other relevant actions for support of democratic discourse.
The present usage is most of the time a supplement to the mainstream media. News from the mainstream are posted and discussed. The discussions on the postings do not go very far. These never add another dimension to the original content from the mainstream media. But we should keep in mind that this is not simply a Pakistani issue. A UC Berkeley study shows that in the US, over a period of 10 years, only 10% content on FB was original. 90% remains cut-paste or chat. This shows the real use of social media, especially FB. It remains an interactive platform among friends. The word friends naturally has a different meaning than the traditional one. The old use of the word ‘distant friends’ for books has now been transformed into ‘virtual friends in real time’. The reality of their being and the instant interaction is something really amazing.
At this point one can talk about supporting a movement, discourse on democracy, and other such angles. But the trend in vogue doesn’t seem to encourage this development. We either have to wait for the level of maturity at a global level or engineer a debate. The former will take time while the latter is unethical. It is like the notorious ‘lesbian blogger from Syria’. This is not an option, because it will ruin the very credibility of an interactive process meant for good. So, the best option is to wait and see. The last and most important word of caution could be that social media mouse clicks are no alternative to active participation in actions for democracy, human rights, and social change. The lazy clicks won’t change the world, no matter how many millions these could be. Awareness is not action. In fact, action is awareness.

Of Feeling Pity and being Human

2011-05-15T08:24:00.000-07:00

I went home to my village. Not far from Peshawar. Homecoming is always sweet. Family, loved ones, known faces, with centuries of acquaintance in every eye. I am a kind of a celebrity over there. The guy from the city who made it without the help of his village roots, his family name and his father's pride. These are bad times for landowners. The money modern luxury, or even comfort, requires couldn't be found toiling the land. This is the Pashtoon heartland, inhabited by people who love family feuds and losing their sons in them. Loss is a cultural thing. Loss is a sense of pride.
But this time around I saw a woman working at home. I saw her earlier also. She had this calm and quiet demeanor, something that aspires respect and sorrow at the same time. She didn't have the tongue in cheek attitude of the housemaids. She had that deep sorrow in her eyes. Quietly doing all she was asked to do. I asked about what she earns a month. "500 Rupees and food," was the answer. "And she works all day long, till you ask her to leave," I asked. "Yes, she is a good woman," came the compliment. I was told the woman had a home and land of her own. The family had lost it. They had to come from nearby village to secure a few meals, and this is what she got.
Her eyes followed my kids, my wife, and myself with appreciation, sadness, and solemnity. "What is she thinking." Nobody need to be an Einstein to solve the riddle. Her own kids' hunger, her own haplessness, and uprooted life compared with the homecoming of the city guys. I can't enjoy anything. I just sat there. My wife came to me, whispering in my ear,"she looks different". "I know," I told her. She had never served as housemaid before. She had lost all she had and is new into servility. "We should help her," she said. "Sure", I told her, "This is the least we can do."
Individual philanthropy is good, but it is never an answer to such an enormous question of poverty. It never retrieves self respect. The begging bowl doesn't vanish with the magic wand of individual philanthropy. It satisfies the ego of the giver, while puts a loaf of bread into the mouth of the needy, without the guarantee of this arrangement being permanent. There is also a difference between philanthropy and generosity. Generosity fulfills the needs of the needy, or it doesn't but gives some support, without necessarily feeling empathy for the needy. It thus never rehabilitates. It never helps the needy regain her/his self respect. Philanthropy on the other hand is a helping hand with a heart. If one can't see the need of ones own little children in the eyes of those in need, there is little hope that the people in need would ever be able to rise above subhuman level.
Is our society ready to take this step towards humanity? This is the question all of us have to ask ourselves. This is nothing to be taught, but something to be felt. It is the process of sublimation among individuals as well as social units, the society as a whole. The excuse of being in trying times and under immense pressure from all sides is not a valid one. It is, in fact, during the worst times that the greatest achievements in humanity could be made. If this is true, our time is ripe.

A Nation Losing Hope

2011-05-01T22:38:00.000-07:00

Pakistan is one of the countries we euphemistically call “transitional societies”. The transition has gone rotten due to the apathy of the society and state to get out of the transition phase into a stable life cycle.
What are the people of this land thinking? They live in a constant fear of death, their own, that of their loved ones. Rising prices of the everyday subsistence commodities is spiralling everyone down into the pit of poverty. Joblessness and social inequality is pinching harder every passing day. The unholy silence of all political actors to bring any positive change in the country has become unbearable. The mainstream political parties are busy in personal vendetta, forgetting the mandate of the people altogether. This is the narrative of a situation, which the common man directly experiences in the shape of terrorism, corruption, social and political inequality, and the loss of faith in life and its humane cycle by the youth of the nation.
This is the present of Pakistan. The present has become too painful, because it has a sordid past. More than a decade of terror-ridden environment, endemic corruption from the very onset of the national existence, and the abysmal living conditions for many of the hapless for many decades has really taken its toll.
People don’t trust anybody. They are not even thinking about change. And this is dangerous. If a people lose all hope, they naturally decide to take desperate measures in desperate situations. Civil wars are an outcome of such anarchic life situation. If nobody helps, lets help ourselves. Take the control of things into our own hands. When small sections of a society are forced to think on these lines, they decide to go for and Armageddon, the final battle between good and evil; with the conviction that they are destined to win. They are convinced of the rightfulness of their action. This is a partial truth also. Their grievances are justified and their struggle is right. But the problem begins with the very modalities of the struggle for emancipation and the final victory of truth.
The people of Pakistan are truly the victims of atrocities by design. But the problem lies in the way they decide to tackle their misery. They don’t have a clear perception of the root causes of their problems and there is no intellectual leadership to spearhead this analytical-strategic movement for the ultimate victory of the right over the wrong. The superficial media analysis on TV talk shows is the only intellectual asset the poor people have right now. The political leadership has already been discredited and the number of sacred cows is on the rise everyday.
Where do we stand as a nation? In a void. The country is really divided into the haves and have-nots. The whole world is being run like this in one way or another. But across the globe either there is an institution called government that stands between the haves avarice for power and the larger populace yearning for justice. Or there is a relationship of benevolent autocracy ruling the interaction between both sides of the divide. Pakistan was an example of the latter until lately. This is no more. The haves are busy cobbling up newer alliances to retain as much power as possible, be it being in the government or the phony role of the opposition. They are but not mindful of one thing. The alliances and manoeuvrings are for the sake of ruling the masses, through carrot or stick, whichever works best at a given moment.
But the problem right now is that there is nobody to rule. People no more believe in the sham called democracy. They are on their own. They are living in an anarchy that is not yet declared as one. The dangerous side of the issue is that nobody accepts the abyss gazing back into our eyes. There is no more room for pretentions. This is the moment of truth. The governance structure’s failure is no allegation anymore. Trust deficit is not an issue anymore. Nobody cares or thinks about the trust issue. People are convinced that there is no government, despite the TV appearances and the money sucking buildings known as pillars of the state, home of the most corrupt in the land.
The loss of faith in everything civil in this country is the most dangerous turn in our national history. It is no more child play, as most of the self-beguiling spin-doctors still try to believe. I won’t like to end the whole discussion on a pessimistic note, but the reality facing us squarely allows no other way of defining the present. The present quiet among the masses in Pakistan is the immanent sign of an unprecedented upheaval to happen. Something that won’t be controllable through any means known to the national gurus and the international big brains. To avert all this needs honest action. There is no more time left for soul searching, the euphemism to buy time for doing nothing. The trillion-dollar question is “who will get into this action, who will make the move.” There is none to answer this question. The question confront us belligerently while the clock is ticking.

Selling Dreams of the Wretched

2011-02-06T01:04:00.000-08:00

"Today I believe in the possibility of love; that is why I endeavor to trace its imperfections, its perversions", Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks.
As for love, we are seeing signs of fatigue in hatred towards Fata in the international community. Accompanying it is the yearning to see the human face of Fata. People want to know whether beneath the gun running image there lies a human face, smiling faces of little kids, school going (longing to have a school at all), men and women living in human relations (like any part of the world), parents wanting to get food for their sons and daughters, women looking forward to see their men alive and stressless, men making it possible to see their families without fear of losing them or themselves. This all is not yet consciously brought to the table by the world around Fata, including the ignocent Pakistanis living out of the troubled region, sharing the national existence, but not feeling the pain of the wretched of this part of the earth as part of the national organism.
This makes the world of non-pashtoons a human denomination ready to know about Fata soon, if not already keen enough to be conscious of this yearning. But here we are faced with another very basic question. What if the world asks to give the real picture of these people? Are we ready, do we have the skills to do it? If yes, how? Who will do it?
We need a story, a truth going out. Who will write the story? It is already there, myriads of them. Who will narrate it and how? This is the question. Everybody could narrate it. But the problem with a story is that it needs to fit the flavor of the audience. The world is literally a stage to put this tiny little place and this small number of people on it. Most of the audience will reject it on the very basis of being too negligible a part of the world, a spot whose existence is not even recognized as a human denomination by the people living within the geographical boundaries of the state, Pakistan. Why should we listen to it? Believe me I have been thorough this in the West, especially Europe. "Why to work on this tiny little spot. The whole country is a mess. Whats special about this part?" I won't go into the answer scheme, because it is a topic within itself.
What it tells it is that the story is not easy to tell. It is difficult. It needs a strategic narration. bringing the human face of Fata to the fore is against the vested interests of the best story telling apparatus at hand, the mass media. What other options do we have to give the right forum to the human story of Fata. There are not many, if we are talking about the world as an audience. We do talk about community media a lot, but if the world is the stage and the whole of it is watching, we need something bigger to tell the story. But it is easier said than done. The mainstream doesn't sell humanity, it sells sensation. But it never admits doing it. It needs a human face. The arguments the mainstream has against the human story of Fata is threefold. One, there is no access to the real story (they can't afford saying there is no story,) secondly, there is no good narration; and thirdly, they are afraid of experiments. They have businesses to run and appetites to feed. In the age of breakneck competition, one can't afford novelties. This is the meekest and most low tuned of all three arguments, never heard so obviously, but it is there.
Now teachnically, all these three arguments could be summarized into three main themes: access to real life situation in Fata, capacity of local journalists (the ones with access), and the editorial policy (financial interest, to be honest.)
How to deal with the issue? How to make the story public? The workable scheme in this regard is to build the capacity of journalists with access to look for the human aspect of the story, their own story, and then narrate it in a manner that could have the possible positive impact on the global audience. Now this issue is directly related to another very important aspect, the market. Being acceptable to the market is one big challenge. Rest assure that even if the former two hurdles are overcome, the mainstream will still not budge an inch. It will still remain apathetic to the humane aspects of life in this region. It needs proof that something could sell. Yes, the mainstream might buy the so called success stories, the profiles of the exception that prove the very opposite in real life. There is need to prove the market value of the stories from Fata. This is more of a public relations job than that of reporting, story telling. It is a strategic component of the whole issue.
Creating a market, proving that the human story could be sold, without losing the financial package, is the job. We need community media to make this happen. Journalists, amateur story tellers (students, anybody with something to tell,) should use the venues of proliferation, community media, to get help in getting their stories to the next level, to the audience that matter; not yet the real audience.
Media follow the news elite. They also have to do a lot of PR, cover whatever an elite says. The elite also has to keep their public face alive, no matter what their personal opinions are. They will always put a nice word for the humane image of Fata. They might not simply do it out of pretension. This might be their first exposure to such stories. If this is well done, more than half the battle is won. The mainstream gets a taste of the human side of the wretched of the earth. Once this image reaches the public through an elitist corridor, the bandwagon starts rolling. People will ask for it. Media will be forced to allocate resources, appoint professionals, change the editorial design, and all that it takes. They smell blood, they go for it. They went for human rights, lawyers' movement, and so many other things; not out of their love for it, but because they smelled profit, they smelled getting an edge over the over.
The children of Fata do have a chance to be heard. It needs a strategy to make their voice heard, their faces seen, their impressions recognized as a testament to being human. Even a humane cause needs a crafty strategist with a soul to make it happen. Humanity is not easy to serve, but it is doable for sure.

THE HUMAN FACE OF FATA

2010-11-14T04:28:00.000-08:00

“When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute,” Walter Lippmann
This naturally seems a familiar statement. In Pakistan we have places made distant and unfamiliar through the unwillingness of the mainstream to try to get familiar with. The mainstream means the socio-political elite, the predominant majority of masses, and also the media. Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Fata, is an example of this “radical distortion,” both nationally and globally.
The image of Fata is more or less mythical. It has the mercurial disadvantage of ranging from bravery to savagery. Changing times have changed the meanings and then the very words changed. Traditional hospitality, once the greatest virtue of being a Pakhtoon, is now translated into tendency of harboring terrorists, while bravery is easily translatable into violence that could easily be generalized into the term in vogue, terrorism.
Now the strength (and, at the same time, weakness) of human mind is that “we are all captives of the picture in our head - our belief that the world we have experienced is the world that really exists,” as Lippmann points out again. These pictures in our heads get transmitted through interaction with other human beings, communication, and also happenings in our individual and collective life. Our experience to distant lands was earlier restricted to verbal narratives that transformed into stories and then into books. The new world gets this through the power of the mass media.
The media is the storyteller of our times, the revealer and image-maker of distant and complex human denominations. It also decides what is far and what is near. A musical competition or comedy show in India is near, while a school in Khyber Agency is far and away. How could it happen? All the controversies involved in the former are brushed under the carpet, while all the familiarities and commonalities are taken as non-existent in case of the latter. This is distortion, plain and simple. But how does it happen? The answer is simple and complex at the same time. To keep it simple the bad sells best in the case of Fata, while the best sells the best in case of India. People are fed up with India bashing and the world also wants us to be friends. The package naturally includes a public image of steadily rising harmony through the mass media. But media is a theater of conflict; motley of changing patterns. There is an inbuilt need to strike a balance by transferring demons to another convenient location. Fata is convenient, it is globally accepted as the home to all bogeymen on the planet.
Now the challenge at hand is to sift the true from the false, the accident from the incident, and the human from the brutal. Pakistani media is unable to do this in case of Fata. Reasons are many. Being rural, which makes them a victim of urban bias of journalists, is one natural drawback Fata shares with the rest of the rural backwaters in Pakistan. Journalists are not able to overcome their urban/civilized bias, while talking about this region in Pakistan. There are also historical reasons that add preconceptions to misconceptions. Fata is seen till date through colonial glasses. This is true for all of Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa, but even more for the tribal areas. The Great Game between Tsarist Russia and the British Crown preconditioned a buffer zone. The British were not in a mood to venture into Afghanistan, but they were also not very enthusiastic about anything on the other side of the Indus. To cut the long story short this part of the empire was kept as the lawless frontier. But this lawlessness was not the people’s choice. It was thrust upon an innocent people under a system of governance that still exists. But the propaganda, the mainstream propaganda at that time, declared this place Yaghistan, the land of the unruly.
Now this is the image Pakistani media carries further till date. After 9/11 this has become a global nomenclature, never overtly uttered, but always implied. There are many slips of tongue that affirm the existence of this mindset. “Name them, kill them” has worked really well. All this is propped up on the idea of “distant and unfamiliar.” The third element is “complexity.” In case of Fata complexity stems from the preceding standpoints. Perceptions are kept and then further molded through keeping the image of far and away in tact. Why do the journalists and media organizations do this? Why don’t they strive to know the human reality of the people living in this part of the country? First, “blood sells best in the media.” The owners have vested interest in keeping the devil alive. Journalists covering Fata always complain that even if they try to give the human aspect of their hometowns, it is never entertained. This, despite the fact, that every news organization has a Fata desk. The editors’ answer to it is that such news either represents vested interests or are very poorly presented. This might be true, but it is a partial truth. There are many other areas where correspondents are not unto the mark, but since these sensations sell, nobody cares. These are accommodated.
The other more dangerous aspect of this commission and omission is being part of the global media. This is the very basic fact behind keeping the human face of Fata hidden. The veil is kept tight, both by local correspondents and their comrades in main offices for the sake of their own convenience. It is true that media men in Pakistan really need rigorous training to understand and interpret the present reality. But their deliberate attempt to keep the situation complex and murky is not simply unprofessional, but criminal. Media and media men must understand the fact that by neglecting the human dimension of Fata they are actively participating in the plight of innocent women, children, young and old, people who are victims of a vicious cobweb of crimes against humanity. The children of Fata need a better world than their fathers and forefathers. Media has the power to represent them as human beings. This responsibility should be met. The child singing in India is our own, no question about it. But the child reeling under misery in Fata is also no alien.

Turning the Idiot Box into a Useful Audiovisual Experience

2010-10-25T23:42:00.000-07:00

"Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads," George Bernard Shaw.
These words seem familiar. Aren't we living in a society where every word we read has a background? It is always essential reading, the most important thing. The audacity of expression is long lost, but we have also lost the courage to read what we wish, what is not essential reading, not a ‘must read’ in order to float easily in the sea of absurdity. Do we need to change? Yes we do. Reading the book nobody reads leads to indulgence in discourse nobody understands, though everybody approves. This brings the society at large into a circular discourse. The argument revolving around the news of the day. Thus, terrorism, power-tariff, corrupt politicians, and so on. This is the taste of our times. We have become men "of great common sense and good taste", social robots. We talk the talk most of the time. This makes us socially acceptable, but the cost is "originality and moral courage", as Shaw puts it.
Who leads this circle of anomalies? The media. The media is the book of our times. Every anchor is running a chapter.
We have become spectators of our own happenings. The lead role of the media is nothing new in sub-continent. This country has emerged and lived through confusing times. From the very onset there was a lot of external and unknown elements in the national discourse. The division of India, which became the Independence of India and Pakistan, entailed one of the biggest migrations in human history. Both of the new nations, Pakistan being newer than the counterpart, needed information about these deadly travels. The need was satisfied through the media and also literature, which until recently had the tragedy of the Partition as its most dominant theme. Even earlier the unification of Muslims across the globe remained one important theme for major Muslim thinkers/politicians, whose one important vehicle was the newspaper.
This defined the taste of the new nation as well as the role of its media. Current columns in Urdu newspapers are a continuation of this lead role. These roles are in dire need of change with the growth of private television, armed with live talk shows. The dominant discourse has also changed a lot. We are living in a state of war, with no definite enemy in sight. The common man doesn’t really know why his child can’t play around the way he did? What has changed? The structure of television gives us a great advantage to answer this and similar vital questions posed by the traumatised audience looking for guidance and fellow feeling.
The limitations of private TV are not difficult to understand. Private TV does know that it is the new book we all are supposed to read. What it doesn’t understand though is that due to a decade of training in self-censorship the very fabric of our self-proclaimed independent media is not fit to become the book we need to read. Private TV is new. It is not a time factor, but rather one of capacity. The workforce this medium is getting is mainly from print. Current lead TV anchors are people from print. They deal with audiovisual as they used to deal with print in the good old days. But their problem gets deeper when they are asked to do what they have never done in print, in their self-designed columns. It is live interviewing. Interview is the most difficult art for a media professional. Its scale gets even higher when it is audiovisual, reaching the highest when it comes to live interviews, and especially group interviews. This is what talk shows affecting many lives are all about. A fashion talk show is different from the ones that are based upon the day’s happenings and these are also being tragic, frustrating most of the time.
The first and foremost requirement for a TV show that provides its audience with content worth watching, is orientation training for the hot shots, known as prime time TV anchors. The men and women who have either a useless narrative, sarcastic style, or who imitate US talk shows. The aggressive style of many female anchors is nothing but an imitation of other countries. This is an ethical issue. These guys need to know the ethics of their job. This ethics is based upon social responsibility towards the audience; of not taking the audience as wet clay waiting to be moulded by the magic wands they carry in their words. They must understand the reason behind the whole media structure and specifically the needs of the Pakistani audience.
No matter how big the egos of the famous anchors, they still need training. They need an introduction to TV journalism, to the art of concept building for programs and then the selection of topics. This effort should be supported by intense audience research. This is something the whole world is doing except Pakistan. Audience research is an integral element of modern TV. It becomes an imperative when live talk shows aiming at day-to-day life affecting issues are aired.
Once they get this conceptual training they need to learn how to behave on this cool medium as Marshal McLuhan defined it quite early. It is harmful to shout on TV. It is counter productive for the participants, but fatal for the host. If the host remains aggressive all the time or tries to be sly, it won’t bring any good. There is one last genre that needs to be simply supplanted on the TV screen, no matter how useful he seems to be. This is the insipid narrator who poses as a historian, politician, philosopher, academician, reporter, philanthropist, human rights activist, and defender of national and religious ideology; the all in one package guy.
To cut the long story short it is high time to give the people their medium back. To make a serious effort in getting a TV for the audience. To give them a book to read that is everybody reads and understands.

The Media We Live In

2010-10-19T09:35:00.000-07:00

"Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper," Khalil Gibran. We live in a world of exaggeration. A world blinded by megalomania. We are getting blind every passing day. Collective schizophrenia. It is one of the most dangerous ailments of all. But are we the only ones that are blind. We are surely the damned ones. Whatever goes wrong in the world we become the scapegoats. The world media paints a picture of Pakistanis like a people devoid of any moral obligations. Pakistani media borrows the pictures to strengthen the bias, giving a testimony against their own very people. It is true that "a good government with an adversary press becomes a great government." But the adversarial role doesn't mean borrowed spectacles. Adversary press is a press that confronts the powerful for the sake of the downtrodden; the wretched of the earth. Does Pakistani media play this role? Nowhere in sight. It doesn't own the audience, the very basic rule for mass communication.
Mass media in Pakistan mushroomed at the turn of the millennium. Idiot boxes multiplied through proliferation of private TV channels. 24/7 television is a beast that devours the existing and creates anew. Roots of Pakistani media are in the printed word, the newspaper. Newspaper industry got its vigor from anti-colonial movement, the struggle for Independence. Whenever we look back into history the stalwarts of solo journalism were all political activists. They were all using the only available media, newspaper, to further their political agenda, ideology. This made them watchdogs of political ideology, a befitting role for the times they were in.
It is also very natural to carry on this role after the establishment of the new democracy. Pakistani media remained political in nature after Independence from the British. It had to face the wrath of its new rulers, the custodians of faith and sovereignty. Muzzling the media remained the first priority of every government till date. Post-colonial Pakistan remained a pseudo democratic structure where the rich and the mighty entered the echelons of power through their might over the common man, though the facade of infrastructure conveyed government by the people image to the outside world. Media had to toe the line or perish. This lesson was repeatedly inculcated into the minds of the media by democrats and dictators alike. From beaming noise into radio speeches of the founders of the nation to nationalizing the vocal newspapers under the National Press Trust to the Printing and Publication Ordinance happened within less than 15 years of this nascent country.
Most of the mainstream got the message. The few defiant loners never mattered. State controlled electronic media, a very cautious press, and a lot of journalists forced to self-censorship are the products of the system.
Mushrooming of private electronic media brought a new power player into the game, namely PEMRA. Mainstream television has been seen as a larger than life phenomenon, capable of doing miracles to restore the democratic pride of not only the media but also the people. This is not going to happen. Big media is big business and big business is big money, needing more and more attention span of a viewer, baffled by the variety of audio-visual messages beamed into the bed rooms. Attention seeking turned the much lauded talk-shows into cockfights, sooner to become voices of the unknown by choosing trivia as topics of the day. Every TV channel set a stage for one or more cockfights, marketing the hosts and their discourse in a larger than life manner to overawe the idle recipients of the new audible-color.
Exaggerated accounts of distant happenings are systematically being beamed to people, packaged as idea of the day. As Nietzsche prophetically said more than a century earlier "Big lies are hung to small truths." This is very true for Pakistani TV. Though every debate begins with the people, it progresses and ends in abstraction. The anchor-host has the last word. And more than often this opportunity is used to give a personal message, which is either a sum total of the hour long cockfight, or something altogether out of tune with the debate. No matter which way it goes, it is never the people's way. True, it is packaged into a people's parlance, but the viewer always tries to find her/himself after the awe-inspiring demagogy.
The argument of "a new media learning the art of the possible" is no more valid. I think it is high time for soul searching, if there is any left in the so-called marketplace of ideas. Like the Pakistani nation, its TV audience is the source of all money getting into the journalist-businessmen-owner coffers. The audience should have their day. Media and media-men should learn to respect this truth. The only way to know the needs of the audience is to go through rigorous audience research, knowing what the people want to know. This is the first and most important step to avoid exaggeration that leads to loss of temper. There is a long way ahead to reach the point of knowing the art of doing a democratic, representative media. Playing the adversary to serve vested interests won't last long. It might, but it is not worth. Doing the right thing is nothing patriotic; it is professional. Experiments with exaggerations should give way to practicing the truth. This is the eternal norm of credible communication.

Small Voices for a Great Future

2010-10-05T10:16:00.000-07:00

“There is nothing like dream to create the future. Utopia today, flesh and blood tomorrow”, Victor Hugo
The definition of future in our land has always been enormous. Enormous in the sense of doing something big. Creating a future for a nation. A nation very abstractly defined. We have always remained a people who think big. Thinking big is good, but only if it serves higher interests and also remains beneficial to larger sections of humanity. Here thinking big never had this aim. This is the top to bottom, vertical thinking process that we persistently follow. We always wanted to build a Pakistani nation, the future of our dearly won freedom. This is a great thought. But how did we decide to realize it? We decided to follow dreams of rich and mindless who grafted ideas in isolation. Our education system, so vertically designed, indoctrinated generation after generation that we no more know how to think to get a future for a nation.
Lets think for a moment what a nation really means? It is made of individuals who could be best understood in their small interactive contexts. Contexts we know as communities. Now defining a community is another issue. If we try to get a perfect definition for every human denomination, we shall reach nowhere. Thus the famous saying: "definitions are abstractions and are never comprehensive." The easiest way to define a community is an interactive human entity that shares the joys and sorrows of everyday life in a very direct manner. There is nothing imaginary about knowing each other. If one doesn't have access to water the other doesn't have it either. Availability or non-availability of basic amenities (or luxuries) is a shared issue for a given community. Right now we are not talking about luxuries. We can't afford the luxury of thinking about a community sharing luxuries where basic amenities of life become luxuries.
What could be the definition of a future if we look at the world from the bottom upwards. It would simply be a sum total of most (preferably all) communities getting a better future. It is simple, the greatest good for the greatest number of people. How can we achieve it? Through allowing the greatest number of people get their voice to the greatest number of people. To give a platform to all and sundry (the not too positive term) say whatever the world is in their eyes. To respect this world view. To overcome the prejudice of prejudgement. To allow unsophisticated voices come to the fore. To let people evaluate their immediate environment and respect it with open hearts.
True, this is the death of the mainstream, but what is mainstream. If mainstream doesn't accept the parts that create the whole, it becomes an abstraction. And this is what is happening right now. Even when we send cub reporters to their own small villages, the very villages they left in the morning to come to the university, they get into their parent communities, their mothers and fathers, with a mainstream bias. The psychology of status at work. The "I am better than these simpletons, because I am going to give them a voice." And it is at this point that our community project fails. Our young men and women fail to recognize their own kith and kin.
Overcoming this natural bias is the art of community journalism. This is a typical outcome of backwardness, of predominant illiteracy, of education becoming a privilege. True, the few getting the chance to higher education are privileged, but this also posts a responsibility on the shoulders of the privileged. They are also ambassadors of the underdog. If they fail to recognize their responsibility and act as celebrities in the very courtyards they breathe in day and night, they are doomed. Their communities don't have a future. And if communities don't have a future, there is no nation to think about. We do need dreams to create our future, but we also need to know how to dream.
Community media is one such enterprise that needs technology and humanity at the same time. You can’t feel, you can’t film; you can’t make sense of the simple world around you. A world that is telling its story in thousands of different ways. One has to get rid of preconceptions to listen to the music of the heart. Getting into ones own parent community with a sense of superiority is the worst moral crime of all. It becomes even worse when the visit is meant to bring the reality about the life of a people. State of the art technology is excellent, trainings are a must, but a good heart is a precondition. Journalism for the voiceless is still a mission. It always will remain one. This is one reality never going to change until all ills of human survival on this planet are defeated. Until then we have to keep the torch burning high and bright.

Of Knowing Men to Remain Human

2010-09-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

“Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor - all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked - who is good? Not that men are ignorant - what is truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.” W.E.B.Du Bois, Souls of the Black Folk
The idea of know thyself as the highest good offered by Socrates and immortalized by its inscription at the Delphic oracle has always been an easier said than done axiom of human existence. How do we know ourselves? How do we know others? Do we meet the other beyond good and evil or we always compartmentalize human capacities into ostensible yardsticks developed by time-ridden ideas born to be transitory? Compartmentalization of other individuals and groups into black and white, into true and false, into good and evil, making it easy to issue verdicts but very difficult to do justice. In such quests for righteousness we always forget that all the ideals human beings follow are destined to decay. Ours will have the same fate. It is humanity alone that survives.
Humanity is the most oft- and yet ill-defined precondition of our existence on this planet. Now how do we define humanity? Is there a certain way, a method? For many there is, but for a few there isn’t. Let us talk about those who defy the orderly definition of humanity. Who think being human is the greatest good unto itself. Living human and letting others live a human life as the ultimate act of humanity. This very emotion gives birth to the noble human capacity to do good to the point of sublimation, of achieving the greatness to forgive and forego. To forgive the mistakes of others, mistakes that might be a simple difference of perception, or even something not easy to digest within a given time and space dispensation, the environment in which we are born and brought up, the culture, our heritage and our identity.
From this point onwards the journey of sublimation enters the phase of foregoing. Of unlearning what we cherish as heritage, as culture. Every humane movement in the history of mankind has this distinct feature as the cornerstone of its development. Those who cannot unlearn are incapable of innovation. And those who can’t innovate perish. They cling to worn out ideas till the ideas have worn them out. Iqbal prophetically said in his lectures “worn out ideas are never risen to power in a society that has worn them out.”
Now the dilemma of our nation also lies partially in this crisis of identity. Though no single factor could be cited as an ultimate reason for good or evil even for a single individual, let alone for a society. Each reason constitutes the fabric of the whole. From the very onset Pakistan has been a battle-place of ideas. Vertically grafted ideas, ideas developed by a small elite from the figments of their imaginations, have become the test of loyalty for the nation. Every individual or group, no matter how original or large it might have been, has had to fit into the frame. People with distinct cultural identities and histories were declared enemies of the state, because they were not able to remake themselves into the imaginary national identity. The irony is that this class never believed or practiced it, but still vigorously imposed it upon the masses through the media and education. They did this is a soft manner while the writ of the state was often used to decide such conflicts of identity. The ones who dared to differ with the mainstream being the ones in conflict.
Preconceived notions of national identity damaged the organic growth of the state and society. Thus, the absence of leadership and grassroots democracy. Democracy cannot flourish under preconditions. Indeed, the greatest precondition for democracy is the absence of preconditions. As Bernard Shaw aptly put it: “There is only one golden, rule that there is no golden rule.” Looking for golden rules drives a society into ideas of utopia and utopias are never human. The common good cannot be predefined, because the common man acts most, thinks least. This is why Freud once said,” Civilization is best served by people who don’t even know the meaning of the word.”
If we start talking about the mistake we, as a nation, made and continue to make, it will become an unending tale of woes. Let us not talk about it. It will bring nothing but leave a bad taste in our mouths. Let us be positive and talk about what we can do. We need to reorient ourselves. First and foremost we need to unlearn the compartmentalization of others into boxesof ethnicity, sects, creeds, and language. A multi-threaded social fabric like Pakistan’s cannot exist with such pretentions. Tolerance is not a natural, inherent human capacity. It is developed through the use of the faculty of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not offered as a favor to anyone; it is respected as the right of other not to be harmed by our prejudices. When we forgive someone we should always keep in mind the fact that we are sublimating our own beings to a higher level. Not simply letting a culprit lose.
Our society needs this soul searching immediately. It is already late in the day, but it is never too late to do good. This is the only way we can save ourselves from the “tragedy of our age…of knowing too little of men”

Media For the Commoners

2010-09-12T06:52:00.000-07:00

"It was that simple. Chou En-lai knew that he was addressing lonely men, men whose mentalities had been branded with a sense of being outcasts. It cost him nothing to make such a gesture, to speak words of compassion. He offered no programs of industrialization, no long term loans, no mutual defense pacts. To the nations smarting under a sense of inferiority, he tried to cement ties of kinship." Richard Wright, The Color Curtain.
This is the voice of compassion we direly need from all quarters. The have-nots of this country have become a city within the city, the city of the poor. Marx’ words about being two cities within a single city, one of rich and one of poor, can easily be generalized for the whole Land of the Pure. What does the city of the poor, that part of the nation that is the dominant, silent majority, reeling under abject poverty or a minority among them (the so called middle class) ready to go down the spiral to be devoured by it, need to become part of the scenery rather than being the spectator?
What can we offer and how can we do it? The how becomes more important than the what because we have to look for venues of compassion. The only compassionate partner of modern men and women, no matter how backward he/she is, is the media. What type of media might bear the word “compassion”? It is community media. What is community media? Even the present day mass idiot boxes pose to be community spokespersons through giving local tickers and making a mockery of people's miseries by claiming to be “the first on the scene”. They don't qualify to do it. There is no question about it.
Community media is a media that develops out of the needs of a smaller human denomination and responds to its needs, answers its questions, and advocates for its needs. Corporate media, the media running on fear and favor, to be precise, do not qualify to do it at all. The needs of the impoverished and those "smarting under the sense of inferiority" can only be met by something more altruistic. Here again many will object that such an arrangement is impossible in the world of cut throat competition. This is also what we call mediated reality. If good schools are possible, and good hospitals are possible, than why not an altruistic community media? The need of the hour is to understand the meaning of this important phenomenon. To understand how it operates.
First, community media is a patient, audience-based enterprise. One should have the patience to listen to stories and also the acumen to tell stories. One can never tell a story if one is not positive enough to listen to one.. Our mainstream media malaise of stuffing people with preconceived questions is not of any use. Questions must arise from the very soil and souls that are being presented. It is their version of reality that is important, not what we decide is important in our cozy (and not too cozy) drawing rooms. Our being "knowledgeable" is the worst qualification for the job. We need to "come to" them "with the trust of a child," borrowing the words from Peter Gabriel's famous song “Red Rain”.
The very word community media means it is their media, not someone else's. The second most important step is to give the people their voices back. It should not transmit messages in "packages", giving the name of the reporter and the channel that streams it. The person and the community should get their name acknowledged. It is important to build confidence and develop a horizontal system of communication. People should get their views back in a form where they can see themselves; individuals as well as communities should be able to identify themselves. It is the same with movies and drama all over. And those with the tall talk about objectivity know well that there is none. The most objective is what helps the people who lay claim to it the most. That doesn't succumb to narrow, vested interests. If we make this the yardstick there don't exist many. So, enough of the objectivity chirping. And still it is objective. It is never based on fables. It is the truth of a people. Let it be in the open, let it see the light of day.
There is need to develop a network based upon community radio (the most effective), newspapers, or even TV that uses reporting methods in a humane manner. The above picture is one such example. The little guy is feeling comfortable with the camera. He is interacting. The kids are not afraid. They are enjoying being part of the process. All this comes after a patient hour or two. The reporters roam in the area with their elders, listening to their stories, the little ones watching the whole process. Then comes the moment that they let themselves play around in front of the camera. And all this ends up in a photo (also a video clip) where the media is no more an outsider.
The need of the hour is thus to develop a network that lifts images, without bias and prejudice, from the simplest level of human existence (and these shouldn't be social outcasts, exceptional problems), to the mainstream. Every part of the country should get its share of presence on the national mainstream. This can only be done if we learn the art of reporting for the poor, understand the need of "cementing ties of kinship", to give the silent, dominant, unrepresented, but never honored majority of this country, a voice.

Empathy Design for the Water Struck

2010-09-03T21:11:00.000-07:00

"Nothing can describe the Confusion of Thought which I felt when I sunk in water; for tho' I swam very well, yet I could not deliver my self from Waves so as to draw Breath, till that wave having driven me, or rather carried me a vast Way on towards the Shore, and having spent itself, went back, and left me upon Land almost dry, but half-dead with the Water I took in."
Daniel Defoe in Robinson Crusoe defines a very pertinent human condition. A condition we can sympathize with, but can not fathom. We need not to fathom it. Our responsibility is not to analyze how much pain one (or all) felt when they suffered at the hands of water. This is done. People are left "half-dead." Don't need our analysis. They need our understanding. The question is how to understand. The instrument of understanding is naturally our heart and mind. It is being fed through information. Information that comes through different sources. One being the modern mass media. Media brings sorrows and pleasures from distant, and also not so distant, lands into our immediate presence. But media always brings in bias with it. It prioritizes one happening over the other. It helps and blurs our vision of reality at the same moment.
There are but other human faculties that help us understand the sorrows of the ones who are "left upon the land almost dry." The best instrument is identification. Identification is the human faculty of putting ones being in other's position. We cease to remain human once we are unable to empathize ourselves with the ones whom we consider our own.
The people who are left in the lurch by the existing disaster are a resilient genre, since "Pakistani society is a pain absorbing society", a German TV channel commented at the very beginning of the disaster. The aids to our perception, namely the media of mass communication, are but an important instruments in this struggle against the inevitable. Natural disasters can not be stopped. These are the testimony of power of nature over the struggle of man to survive. But disasters could be managed. This could be done through preemptive training or post disaster management efforts. The time to preemption is no more. It has already been lost. reasons are numerous: inability of state and society to understand the meaning of interactive, community based, responsible, humane structures could be cited as the main reason. All the talk about corruption, inefficiency, and many many other ills could be brought to one point: non-participatory, vertical system of social interaction, in simpler but more elusive terms absence of grass root democracy; democracy whose natural outcome is responsible attitudes, not only in the political sphere, but more importantly at the social level, down the very grassroots.
This is the problem lying at the heart of all problems of relief and reluctance of the world to come forward with hearts and minds to help a disaster clearly accepted by the world as one of the worst in recent history.
Media could be used in two ways in the present crises. One is the mainstream media. This could be used in a proper manner to cover the disaster. Here, despite the intensive debate on the issue, a coherent understanding of the issue is absent. Anchors with urban bias reaching a devastated site, camera focussed on them most of the time, their will be done all the time, people shown as third world miseries, while the guy sympathizes with them, isn't any service to the people at all. Now if we turn to the other side of the equation, we see the same overdressed, unpreparedness in the newsroom. Guys this is no Eid transmission. Be human. Try to empathize. Your images are being floated for years and all the viewers appreciate your appearance and mannerisms. This is ensured. Now let humanity flow through your body, your word and your body language. No training can teach it. It is you who can unlearn pretensions, harmony with the hapless will naturally flow through you and become an integral part of the image world. And believe me you all will look much prettier, once you become more humane.
The other important media is altogether missing in the present episode. Not that it has been snatched away or swept away by floods. It never existed. This is community media. We do have FM channels, FM radio. The anomaly between cheap and handy broadcasting and community service has shown itself at the worst moment of our history. The times when this country needed this mouthpiece of the poor it doesn't have it. FM community radio stations went through many phases in Pakistan, but never reached the destination. From hobbyists, to militants, to the money mongers, to aid aspirants; but never to community journalism.There is a dire need to instal FM radios in the camps or in the immediate vicinity. Many would think of this idea as a mad man's dream amid such a situation where people are suffering in all possible ways.
I can understand this and also empathize with the feeling. But at this moment of dearth of resources we should not underestimate the role of this cheap and handy instrument of communication, this voice in the neighborhood, the voice next door. At a moment when we have least resources, this handy media could help managing them through bringing awareness among the affected people. Health and hygiene, helping the people through trauma, information about what is available and what is not, and why, wether updates, and update on conditions at the homes they left. All this could be done most easily through interactive broadcasts on community channels. How will people listen to them, how will they respond? Mobile phones helped people to keep in contact with their near and dear. Every villager buys a phone that could catch FM radio. This job has already been don. What is left is the government's (PEMRA's, to be precise) earliest decision to draft a contract structure for issuing community radio licenses. PEMRA can do this, They are neither struck by the disaster nor are busy in relief. Their bit would be to make it possible for the ones left high and dry to get a taste of grassroots democracy. To get the best gift in the worst times.

The Pashtoon Problem

2010-08-27T22:35:00.001-07:00

"How does it feel to be a problem? they say I know an excellent colored man in my town; or I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word."

W.E.B.DuBios' words about African Americans could easily be used for Pashtoons in Pakistan. I am born and brought up listening to the question by our countrymen. The word problem is easily interchangeable with Pashtoon. "How is it in Peshawar. They say it is too dangerous out there", a young Karachite asks on phone the other night after telling me that 12 buses were burned that evening, there was no electricity, and that he was scared to death after seeing these horrors. "This is routine here and I am sick of it. I was so stressed I thought I would get some peace after talking to you." Like DuBios puts it, I didn't answer a word. I didn't say how can he ask about the wild Frontier with such fear, if he is feeling unsafe in the megapolis. I couldn't dare say, out of courtesy, that the whole house is on fire. The problem is not only being born as Pashtoon, but we are all living and intensifying the problem. We have become the problem.

But the child in the image doesn't know how we are being depicted. She doesn't even know she is born a problem, she is Pashtoon. She even doesn't know her home is no more, her parents might be drowned, everything lost, nothing left. She is just looking out for someone to come and help her out. She exactly doesn't know what she needs; might be feeling hungry, having a temperature, or feeling damp and cold.

The catastrophe that struck KP is enormous. It has swept away the whole region from Gilgit Baltistan to Nowshehra in one day. The steep terrain didn't give anybody time to settle or even grasp the real intensity before it destroyed everything. UN lost one of its biggest warehouses in Asia. Fifty thousand tons of food commodities washed away in a day, only a couple of thousand left. Immediate relief became impossible. Relief agencies are still grappling with the situation.

But the important question is how our countrymen see the problem. "Experts" are weighing the veracity of statements issued from KP. "Saying Northwestern Pakistan is the most impoverished region in Pakistan is statistically incorrect. Baluchistan is poorer." "And this street talk about KP being neglected has not been proven."

Look at the child in the picture and tell her she does not deserve food or shelter, because "statistics" don't support her need. The problem is not whether there is enough to satisfy the needs of all that have been affected by this catastrophe and that not everybody's needs could be met immediately. Some will get relief soon while others might have to wait. Waiting might cost some their lives. All this understandable, though not easy to live through.

The problem lies in not being able to raise above the narrow parochial thinking. Of not being able to get out of the divisive mode of US and THEM. Of seeing the Pashtoon as a problem. Of not seeing these impoverished people as worthy of our national sympathy, of being mainstream Pakistan. Where will all this lead the nation, if there is any left after all this narrowness. Isn't it high time to come out of our shells, see reality in the face, and understand our inner problem of seeing the other as a problem, of making a problem out of our own very national organism.

People of KP are in trouble. There are more dead in a few days than the toll countrywide during continuing disaster, the "slowly approaching Tsunami." The swiftness of destruction caused enormous damage to this already battered part of the country. Let this smaller time window not add to the miseries of these people. Let neglect not add fuel to the fire of annihilation. let not innocent linger and die because they can't statistically prove their haplessness. lets be human once in our national lifetime. This might be beginning of the long awaited nation building, something that we only witness on TV shows on Independence Day festivities, festivities that went on even amidst the cries and shrieks of the God forsaken problems.

The Sufi Riddle

2008-10-04T22:36:00.000-07:00

Robert Graves defines Sufism as the only continuous movement in human history, dating back into the mists of prehistory. From the Eleusinian Mysteries to the rites of initiation into the Sufi orders there are similarities and underlying signs of continuity. The thread could easily be traced farther into recorded human history. The question that arises is simply WHY? What is the reason behind the survival of this continuous movement? There are many concepts about it. Like all historical traditions this movement is analyzed differently by different historians. The most common are but the pragmatic and the sublimation thesis. The pragmatic approach tries to understand the movement within a causal context. It mixes Sufism with mysticism on the one hand and tries to rationalize it at a baser level: rebellion against status quo; escape from restrictions; quest for immortality; and so on. The sublimation thesis on the other hand denies the causal matrix. It takes a psychological standpoint. It takes the persistence of the movement as a quest for truth, knowledge of the real self, the I component in human soul that interacts with the me, us, and other. It sees the movement as a quest for self knowledge, an intellectual movement, Know Thyself of Socrates.
Sufism, seen from this perspective, is the sublimation of common human ideals. A search for humanity within the highest echelons of humanity, namely religion. It has taken many forms and shapes, from whirling dervishes, to the charitable music loving, God intoxicated Chistia in the sub Continent. Despite many forms and shapes the underlying motive remains the same: reforming what mediocrity takes as the ultimate reformation. Hence, the allegation of pantheism by the Muslim theologians and the oriental writers. Though the motives of both the groups remained different, the resultant misunderstanding remains the same.
Idrees Shah defines it succinctly in The Way of the Sufis, saying, “Sufism is to avoid preconceptions.” I sincerely think this is what the world needs badly to survive as a human denomination. And it is this strength of developing proper ideals throughout human history that is behind the continuation of the movement.

Mystics and Sufis

2008-09-24T10:14:00.000-07:00

The other day I had a conversation with an Indian professor of English, a gentleman who started his teaching career from Government College Lahore as early as 1942. Well versed in Urdu poetry, close acquaintance of Faiz Ahmed Faiz and having more grasp on Urdu poetry than most of our present day young and not so young friends.
It was a nice evening and the 88 years old professor was citing verses from Ghalib and Faiz. In Ghalib the Sufi tradition is very strong, cloaked in the imagery of wine like that of Khayyam.
The debate entered into the incorrect use of the word mystic for a Sufi. This was when we were at a bookshop looking for books of our interest. Professor Robert Graves Greek Myths reminded me of this introduction to Idrees Shah’s The Sufis. Professor talked about Graves while I told him about the Introduction. “Well, Sufism is quite different from mysticism” he said. “It is more like yoga. It is a way of life, living in harmony with nature”. “At least I see it this way”.
He was right. Most of us mix things and the reason behind are no naivety. It is because our thirst for short cuts to power goads us into misinterpreting things. Yoga is seen as an instrument to develop powers that could impress (control) others, the vey opposite of what it is. Sufism is seen in the same vein. Inner/hypnotic powers that could give one control over others.
I will not spend much time on the right or wrong of this attitude. What is important is to understand how the human mind works at times. Why power? Over whom? What if I get control of another? Wouldn’t it be better to organize my own being than to seek control over others? I think somehow we have reversed the human equation. We have to rethink our human priorities. It is not the question of naming yoga or Sufism right or using them rightly. These are small drops in the life of humanity. Humanity itself is the real essence of life. We have to keep the candle burning or blow it away as Buddha did through nirvana. Nirvana again is misinterpreted. But we will save this debate for a later time.

Why Mystic writing pad

2008-09-21T10:45:00.000-07:00

Title is borrowed from Sigmund Freud’s book. The book is a small segment of Freund’s contributions to metapsychology. Genius of Freud explains the retention process of the human mind. It is the simplest of his books, yet deal with a problem of great importance. It also makes a distinction between the brain and mind; mind being the repository of all experiences in daily life. Freud shows how our experiences get ingrained into our mind and how they help us in everyday experiences. How life gets enriched through the mystic writing pad, leaving us mature after every note on the pad. The brain in this context is the receptor, and expressive instrument of human organism. It transmits inwards and outwards.
The blog promises nothing of such enormity, but aspires to use our intellect to think deeply on issues and experiences of human life in a more humane context.