Daily Times

Are we a hardworking people? Yes and no. A peasant has a lot to do during the sowing season. He works from dawn to dusk. He has to plough the field, take the weeds out, level the ground, build water channels to connect the field with the pumping station or the well, put in the seed, make furrows, apply water and fertiliser, watch plantation to emerge and grow, keep up cleaning and watering operations periodically. Between harvesting, separating the grain from the chaff and sending it to the market, on the one hand, and the next sowing season on the other, he can take it easy.

It should be interesting to see how things are back in the city. They are likely to be far more complex because the population is diverse. The artisans who work with their hands — ironsmiths, carpenters, potters, weavers, shoe makers, barbers, plumbers, and various kinds of repairmen — spend long hours at work. Shopkeepers do not open their doors until sometime after mid-morning, because that is when shoppers, especially women, come out to the shopping centres. Most of them remain open until after dinner time (nine or ten in the evening). Thus they too have a full day’s work to do. Needless to say, ethics relates not only to the number of hours spent on the job but also to the quality of the work done.

It is a very different story with public officials. Higher civil servants during the British rule were possessed of high levels of capability. Young men with educational attainment equal to a first class honours degree from one of the better universities enlisted for a competitive examination for entry into the Indian Civil Service (ICS). Several hundred took the exam but only about 15 were selected each year. They were then sent to a college where they studied Indian history, languages and culture. Upon arrival in India they received training in revenue collection, maintenance of law and order, and magistracy. A member of the ICS rose to be a deputy commissioner, also known as collector, after nearly 12 years of service in lower ranks in the field and the provincial government’s headquarters, called the secretariat.

The civil servant’s working day during the British rule consisted of six hours. He went to work at 10 am in the morning and went home at 4 pm in the afternoon. But normally he got the work done and did not postpone today’s work to the next day. The operational code of conduct since independence allows public officials to go to work late and leave early. During the short hours that they are at their desks, they take time out to entertain friends to tea. No wonder then that the day’s work does not get done, backlogs mount, and piles of files line the office walls. The public whose interest is thus jeopardised must either suffer or bribe its way through the official chain of command.

One may wonder if work ethic was ever strongly embedded in the culture of the middle and upper classes in the areas that now compose Pakistan. I remember that before independence Hindus were generally believed to be more hardworking than Muslims. We have already spoken of Muslims in the rural areas. After independence, lands, businesses, professional and government jobs left by the Hindus fell to the local and immigrant Muslims. All occupations opened up to them. They did not have to work very hard to make a place for themselves.

Elected officials such as members of parliament do very little work. Many of them spend most of their time chatting with colleagues and friends in the lobbies or in cafeterias. Few of them sit in the House to listen to the presentation being made. Much too often the Speaker has to adjourn the House for lack of quorum. Work ethic is in a bad state in the teaching profession, which for many centuries was regarded as one of the noblest. It is reported that tens of thousands of school teachers in Punjab and Sindh draw salaries but absent themselves from work or, at best, do a perfunctory job of teaching. Even at the college and university levels teachers go to their classes unprepared. Quite a few of them go to their classes late and dismiss them before the appointed closing time. I remember that when I was in high school the head master used to call us an hour before the opening time and kept us for an hour after the closing time to have us do additional work. Thus, he too put in more hours than he was required to do. My classmates and I at the time thought he was a bit too dedicated to duty. Now in retrospect I think his conduct was most laudable. Standards of educational attainment in Pakistan are said to have fallen far below those which prevailed before independence. That is not because there is something wrong with the curriculum. The reason is that dedication to duty and work ethics have declined. Diplomas granted by Pakistani universities are not accepted at face value abroad. A Pakistani with a master’s degree goes to a British or American university and the likelihood is that he will be admitted to a bachelor’s degree programme. Indian students do not have to contend with this problem to the same extent because their work ethic and the resulting standards of performance are still in a better state than they are in Pakistan.

In my view the Higher Education Commission (HEC) in Pakistan has gone the wrong way in its campaign of improving the state of education in this country. Instead of enhancing quality it has quantified and monetised education. It is proud that it has increased the number of universities from 10 or so to 70. It aims to produce many more PhDs and it is giving stipends to doctoral candidates and their supervisors by way of inducement. Academic departments in universities are being offered money to produce journals in their respective disciplines. Needless to say, 20 high class universities would have been a more valuable asset for Pakistan than 70 of indifferent quality. Likewise, two competent journals of political science would be more worth having than 10 of them that are mediocre.

Regretfully one must say that far too many people in positions of authority have adopted the degenerate notion that one should be able to make money without having to work for it.

The writer, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, is a visiting professor at the Lahore School of Economics