Daily Times

Prime Minister/Foreign Minister/ Defence Minister Nawaz Sharif addressed Pakistani-Americans in Washington. His main thrust was of grandiose projects. Loud enthusiastic cheers followed each project. This is the disease of nearly all Muslim countries who built the Burj Dubai and Taj Mahal, and now we build motorways, shopping malls, expensive housing societies, underpasses and overpasses, as if that would solve all our problems. This is our claim to ‘modernity’.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), in its last tenure, claimed that the building of a motorway from Lahore to Islamabad would lead to the opening of new towns and industrial estates all along. Nothing of the sort happened. A railway is to be built via Murree to Muzaffarabad and on to Kotli. A highway and railway is to connect the Khunjerab Pass through the Karakorum Highway on to Gilgit and then Gawadar. Land is being acquired at Rewat for a third airport. This will be connected with Islamabad by a 10-lane highway and railway. The eight-lane tunnel under the Margalla Hills is another pipe dream. It was claimed that the new airport would boost exports as if we have a lot to export! With acute shortage of electricity and gas, a large number of our industrial plants have been relocated from Pakistan.

These grandiose projects are supposed to bring ‘khushhali’ (prosperity) to the teeming millions of the poor of Pakistan. The treasury is empty, and we have borrowed heavily ($ 6.5 billion) from the IMF and the local market, and printed currency ad lib. The Prime Minister (PM) claims that the money for the third airport would come from other sources, not from the budget. The land being bought for the third airport, is that from ‘other sources’ too? What about the cost of running and maintenance? The PM quoted China and Turkey as great friends. What escaped him and other politicians was the state of our education, which China invested in for its own society for decades before declaring its grandiose projects. When I visited Beijing in 1989, it was a Third World country, with one four-star, almost empty hotel, and a rundown airport. In 1992, Beijing was building one five-star hotel every week. The Chinese built a high altitude railway line from Beijing to Lhasa, a marvel of indigenous engineering. There are many technological advances made by China without any outside help.

Pakistan (India then) had the finest railway workshop in Asia, which had electricity supply in 1888. Today, we have reduced the railways to a shambles. Imported engines are rotting in the yard. We need Turkish help to clean our cities. Punjab University was the Oxford of Asia, and is now almost a madrassa, while we should have been able to tell the world proudly that Lahore is the home of Punjab University. The closest we have got to improving education in Pakistan is to distribute laptops at a huge cost! I hope, someday, research will show the usefulness of the laptop distribution.

The debate on how societies are built is ongoing and mainly confusing. Every expert has his or her own micro view of what is advancement in human lifestyle. For the oil-rich Arabs, it is a ‘strong and expensive’ army, followed by grandiose building projects. These Arab states, ruled by kings, despots and strongmen, are burning their oil dollars at the altar of life today. The gainer is the west, which provides them with fancy hotels, cars and a lifestyle of luxury. Dubai even boasts of an indoor ski resort! The petro dollars make the west richer…materially and intellectually. In the next 50 years, the oil-rich Arab despots shall become irrelevant to the world, with their crumbling buildings and motorways. Oil is not an endless resource, with alternative energy technology coming up fast.

The prime example of important advancement in the life of the poor is the invention of the printing press in 15th century Europe, which improved the literacy rate at an astounding pace. Turkey, the one-time leader of the Muslim world, abhorred this dangerous development, since it was considered as a threat to the mullah and the state. The Turks were quick to copy the European military system, but universal education was unacceptable to them. Similarly, it was during the British occupation of what is now Pakistan that the printing press was introduced.

Societies are built and sustained by intellectuals who are products of universities and affiliated colleges, which in Pakistan, we have destroyed. Today, the prime objective of universities is to churn out a mass of degree holders. Unfortunately, this is not the main objective of the ‘house of learning’. Research and development should be the sole function of universities, while the awarding of degrees and diplomas should be a by-product of an examining body. In Pakistan, almost every college is now a university, since the control of examinations is an attractive proposition for many.

Universities and affiliated colleges should produce specialists in all fields of human activity. Germany, and more so Japan, were destroyed during WWII, and yet they attained a high level of development in all fields. In the final analysis, it is the human resource that really matters, and not tall buildings and motorways, which have a half-life of 10 years. But we have a problem here in Pakistan. Universities and affiliated colleges are run by people who are third rate educationists, to say the least. If we lack appropriate manpower to make our teaching institutions relevant, then throwing money or grand high-sounding positions shall not work. Today, if we do want a super university in Pakistan, we lack the appropriate level of staff to run even a single university/college. More than 60 years of neglect of research, innovation and creativity in Pakistani society has left us with an uphill task.

(To be continued)

The writer is a freelance columnist