Is Pakistan’s N-CPEC+ vision finally beginning to take shape?

Pakistan’s unique geostrategic location at the crossroads of East, South, West, and Central Asia enables it to function as the “Zipper of Eurasia”, as I wrote over half a decade ago in September 2015 for the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies. I built upon this observation in March 2019 to declare that the creative leveraging of the unprecedented trans-regional connectivity potential offered by CPEC enables Pakistan to become the Global Pivot State. This ambitious vision is finally beginning to take shape after Prime Minister Imran Khan and the Uzbekistani Minister of Transport agreed to pursue a trans-Afghan railway line on Wednesday. I previously proposed such a corridor in my April 2019 debut analysis for CGTN about how “CPEC+ Is The Key To Achieving Regional Integration Goals”, which described the northern branch of CPEC through Afghanistan into Central Asia as N-CPEC+ (“N” referring to North). Eventually, this corridor could expand as far northwards as Russia to create a new North-South integration axis across Eurasia which aligns with President Putin’s vision for the Greater Eurasian Partnership (GEP) like I explained in an academic article that I co-authored over the summer that was republished by the prestigious Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC). As Pakistan begins to take on a more prominent role in trans-Eurasian integration processes, its strategic importance to both China and Russia will continue to rise. Both Great Powers have a shared interest in the South Asian state fulfilling its destiny to unite the supercontinent through CPEC+. It’s only through this connectivity paradigm that a true Convergence of Civilisations can occur, like I explained in an analysis for CGTN in May 2019. The outcome of Eurasia’s diverse civilisations cooperating on trade and other forms of integration could powerfully discredit Huntington’s infamous prediction about a coming “Clash of Civilisations”. Russian, Chinese, and Pakistani interests are all directly served through N-CPEC+. Moscow’s regional allies can become more internally stable as their economies grow upon securing access to the global markets that this corridor provides through the Indian Ocean, as could Russia’s resource-rich Siberian region. Beijing, meanwhile, will see its Pakistani-based CPEC investments put to use as a springboard for trans-continental integration processes and could also secure contracts to construct parts of its northern branch expansion as well. As for Islamabad, it would financially benefit by having its ports facilitate Central Asian trade with the wider world. N-CPEC+ is therefore more than just a connectivity corridor, it’s a grand strategic concept for the future of intra-Eurasian relations in the emerging Multipolar World Order. Russia, China, and Pakistan are coming closer together as each country realises that they need the others in order to fulfill their shared vision of stability in the supercontinent. In fact, continued movement in this direction might even lead to the creation of a new multipolar trilateral between them to replace the stalled one between Russia-India-China (RIC). The end result could be that a Golden Ring rises between them, Iran, Turkey, and Azerbaijan in the Heartland of Eurasia. To be clear, this won’t happen overnight, but the progress that was just made on agreeing to the Peshawar-Kabul-Mazar-e-Sharif trans-Afghan railway shows that the political will is certainly present to take this vision to its ultimate conclusion with time. Some formidable obstacles still remain, however, such as the unresolved conflict in Afghanistan and the efforts of external powers like India to sabotage this vision. There are also obvious questions of financing and other issues related to project implementation, as well as identifying which companies in the region and beyond are most eager to immediately tap into this project upon its completion. Nevertheless, there are plenty of reasons to remain optimistic, especially since it’s becoming undeniable that Russia and China both appreciate the strategic significance of Pakistan’s N-CPEC+ initiative to their GEP and Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) respectively. In fact, as GEP and BRI continue to synergise their connectivity capabilities, their patron states are realising that N-CPEC+ is indispensable to the success of their joint vision for the supercontinent. This understanding is accelerating trilateral integration between them and therefore leading to one of the most exciting geopolitical developments of the 21st century thus far.

from Sports News & Discussions and Performances | The Express Tribune https://ift.tt/3aYiux8

Dissecting the actions of PTI’s online brigade

In 2019, while the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Maryam Nawaz was speaking at a huge rally in Mandi Bahauddin, a party stronghold, a Twitter trend, “#رنڈی_اِن_منڈی” (Prostitute in Mandi) was becoming viral. The disgusting trend was thoroughly misogynistic and was being propagated by none other than some ‘educated’ supporters of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). Disgusted, I took to Facebook to express my outrage. One of my cousins, another PTI supporter, while ‘condemning’ such behaviour, commented that “What goes around comes around because Nawaz had done the same to Benazir Bhutto. Allah kee lathi beawaz hoti hai. (God’s retribution is silent). It’s a punishment for Nawaz from Allah”. He was referring to an alleged incident in the late 1980s when photo-shopped nude pictures of Benazir Bhutto had allegedly been air dropped over several cities in Sindh. At that point I realised that perhaps my cousin was even worse than the propagators of the aforementioned trend. Instead of condemning them he was actually rationalising their behaviour and framing it as some kind of retribution from God. It escaped his otherwise rich imagination that the supporters of PTI were behind the trend and that they were in no way trying to ‘avenge’ Benazir Bhutto but simply targeting Maryam Nawaz for being an opponent of their leader. I found it funny that Benazir Bhutto herself eventually had become very close to Nawaz Sharif and had no qualms in signing the famous “Charter of Democracy”, yet somehow the PTI trolls, who hate the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) with an equal intensity, were avenging what Nawaz Sharif had allegedly done. The PPP’s own supporters however were fine. In fact, they were cheering Maryam Nawaz on. The trend and subsequent justification by some perfectly demonstrates the collective mind-set of some supporters of the PTI: abusive and reeking of self-righteousness – a combination which precludes any introspection. That was more than a year ago. A few days ago, during the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) rally in Multan, there was another trending hash tag, #رائیونڈ_کی_رنڈی (Prostitute of Raiwind), once again targeting Maryam Nawaz. Apart from her, another favourite target of such vile behaviour is Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who is constantly called a transgender by individuals who claim allegiance to the PTI. One can dismiss this attitude by just brushing it aside as ‘typical’ of Pakistani politics and argue that it is not fair to single out PTI. After all, abusive behaviour and misogyny are rampant in all parties. This is true to a certain extent, but some parties appear to be guiltier of indulging in such behaviour than others. According to statistics compiled by “The Coalition for Women Journalists”, social media accounts relating to PTI supporters are behind 42% of the incidents of online abuse aimed at female journalists. In contrast, PML-N – PTI’s foremost rival in the political realm – accounts for merely 3% of such online behaviour, and PPP for less than 1%. Moreover, PTI trolls not only target critics but often abuse their family members also. For example, I still remember when the anchor-person Mansoor Ali Khan’s daughters and wife were abused in the comments section of his Twitter account. Likewise, Mohammad Hanif, while writing for the BBC, shared an incident when PTI trolls posted a pic of his wife in his Twitter comments section and called her a traitor. In a similar incident, journalist Hasan Zaidi was forced to lodge a formal complaint to Bank Alfalah when one of its employees, a PTI supporter, abused his mother on social media. The said employee was fired by the bank, prompting another abusive online campaign against Zaidi by angry PTI supporters. Even Malala Yousafzai, who has never said a word against PTI, is regularly targeted by the PTI trolls. But such behaviour becomes even more of an anomaly given the fact that many of these PTI supporters belong to the white collar, urban middle class and might be more ‘educated’ than supporters of other parties. Perhaps there are multiple reasons behind this phenomenon. Firstly, such behaviour is actively encouraged by the PTI leadership, including Imran Khan who has constantly indulged in the usage of derogatory language against his opponents and has also gone to the extent of deliberately addressing Bilawal as “sahiba” (madam). Moreover, PTI has deliberately appointed foulmouthed individuals such as Shahbaz Gill, Faisal Vawda, Fayaz Chohan, Fawad Chaudhry and Firdous Ashiq Awan as its spokespersons. These individuals regularly indulge in crude rhetoric against PTI’s political opponents. Additionally, on social media, PTI has a large footprint and its social media cell often indulges in coordinated attacks against its critics. Since the encouragement is coming from the party leadership as well as its social media cell, ordinary supporters of PTI have no hesitation whatsoever in indulging in abusive behaviour. Secondly, the primary factor behind this is the cult of personality model which PTI has adopted. This model glorifies Imran Khan extravagantly by projecting him as the only ‘true’ leader and Pakistan’s ‘last hope’ while demonising his opponents by labelling them as corrupt and disloyal to Pakistan. This lopsided glorification coupled with the scathing vilification of PTI’s political opponents encourages PTI supporters to abuse Imran Khan’s opponents and critics. In fact, it does something worse. It gives them an instinctive comfort in their vitriolic behaviour as they feel that Imran Khan’s opponents ‘deserve’ all the abuse because they are corrupt traitors. Lastly, a major reason behind this is the general polarised political atmosphere in Pakistan. As the PDM surges and battle lines are being drawn and re-drawn, the political polarisation has also increased; which in turn has made many PTI supporters even more intense in their support of the party and therefore even more abusive. For many of them, PDM is merely a union of the old corrupt elite to save their looted wealth. This perception only further encourages them to abuse all the opponents and critics of PTI.

from Sports News & Discussions and Performances | The Express Tribune https://ift.tt/2L12Ztf

How to ensure teacher professional development in Pakistan

As an Aga Khan University Institute of Educational Development (AKU-IED) Master of Education (M.Ed.) course participant, it was an illuminating experience to participate in the ‘Effective Management Practices’ (EMP) course, which was undoubtedly a journey of transformational learning and deep insights. This course allowed me to reflect on my previous practices as a head teacher, enabled me to question and unlearn the different key aspects of my traditional practices and motivated me to learn new and innovative practices in the field of educational leadership and management. The following text portrays my understanding gained from the EMP course on Teacher Professional Development, which is just one key and insightful aspect of the EMP course offerings; and pray that these ideas enlighten heads, teachers and education providing systems on the need, significance and ways of initiating PD in schools. Professional development of staff broadly refers to providing enabling conditions to staff to enhance their productivity in the various dimensions of their day-to-day responsibilities including those related to their technical and personal spheres of profession. The professional development of teachers could be defined as teachers’ learning: i.e., how they learn to learn, how they reflect on and make meaning from their learning, and how they apply their knowledge to support pupils’ learning (Postholm, 2012). Hence, teacher’s professional development has deep roots in and integrally linked with students’ learning outcomes and their overall achievements and wellbeing. In educational settings teachers play an important role in achieving the goals of teaching and learning processes. However, it is due largely to knowledge growth at an unprecedented speed in the contemporary world that it becomes increasingly difficult for teachers to keep themselves updated on the evolving and rapidly growing knowledge in education. Needless to say, that in their profession teachers have to continuously aspire to grow on an ongoing basis, otherwise, they run the risk of redundancy and decline in their professionalism. Hence, the need for them to grow professionally which could be through engaging in the reflective practices, through self-directed learning, especially increasing their theoretical understanding of the day-to-day issues and trying to put their theories into practice, and/or through availing from time-to-time the formal (i.e. tailor-made) professional development opportunities to ensure their continuous growth and renewal. It is important to bear in mind that teacher professional development is not an event, it is, instead, an ongoing process that needs quality time, conducive environment, necessary resources, ongoing efforts, and critical reflection to gain pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) needed to improve student learning outcomes. Professional development in the school context Learning is an enigmatic process; therefore, it is important to consider how people learn and how the school-based as well as the external conditions shape, influence and determine their learning (Belanger, 2011). What we clearly know today is that learning is guided by our own philosophies of learning such as behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, and social constructivism. These theories/philosophies elaborate how knowledge is perceived, constructed and approached. Teacher professional development primarily involves the task of enabling teachers to challenge their existing beliefs and approaches about the ‘what,’ ‘how,’ ‘why,’ and ‘when’ aspects of their learning processes. What we also know from our experiences of work in AKESP, a prestigious education providing institution of AKDN, is that schools define and deliver professional development based on the analysis of their current needs. So, the needs analysis becomes the first step in determining the goals of teacher professional development. In fact, the Annual School Improvement Plan (ASIP) is used as a tool to identify and define the needs. Generally, the outcomes of the Training Need Analysis (TNA) relate to enhancing teachers content knowledge, upgrading teachers’ pedagogical skills, improving their problem-solving techniques, managing conflicts, engaging teachers in reflective practice, relating student home tasks with their conceptual learning, strengthening teachers’ assessment techniques, helping teachers understand the twenty-first century leaning skills, and augmenting their leadership skills. Role of the Head Teacher in managing staff professional development School leadership has the pivotal role, of course, after classroom teaching, in influencing and shaping student learning. In fact, it helps improve teaching and learning processes indirectly and through their influence on staff motivation, commitment and working conditions (Leithwood, Harris, & Hopkins, 2008).  Therefore, the school leadership role becomes more significant in professional development of staff. Literature identifies four areas where head teachers have substantial impact on teachers learning, these include: head teacher as instructional leader and learner; the creation of learning environment; direct involvement in design, delivery, and content of professional development; and the assessment of professional development outcomes (Bredeson, 2000). Other forms of professional development include motivation from head teacher to improve teachers academic and professional qualifications through distant learning degree programs. This will result in new learnings for staff and help create knowledge societies within the school through sharing of knowledge with colleagues. Also, head teacher could play her/his role in encouraging teachers to develop reading habits and share their knowledge from the literature with colleagues and students. In addition, opportunities for discussions and reflecting on classroom practices in informal sessions also leads to professional development and knowledge creation. Also, in institutions like AKESP head teachers and teachers are also encouraged to design and implement action research projects to improve small yet important learning aspects related to students. Such innovations from head teachers always benefit the teachers, which then helps the organisation to become a learning organisation. In-house professional development programme Head teachers are not indispensable agents and gatekeepers of teacher learning, but they as leaders and learners become role models, coaches, facilitators, and guides to move teachers towards greater and higher levels of independence and professional autonomy (Bredeson, 2000). The traditional, i.e., authoritarian, approach to school leadership style has numerous undesirable consequences including poor results, dwindling teacher motivation, misappropriation of financial resources and expanding the gulf between school and parents. Hence, the need for head teachers to become sources of inspiration and encouragement for their teachers, students and parents. When it comes to providing teachers in-house professional development opportunities, head teachers need to make the best use of pedagogical content knowledge expertise available in their schools to conduct in-house professional development sessions. This requires head teachers to identify the diverse talents their staff possess. In order to share a practical example from my own practices as a head teacher in an AKESP school, I identified that majority of my staff members were not good at using ‘prepositions’ and ‘adjectives’ while speaking and writing English. I discussed this matter with the language teacher at my school who was strong in his content knowledge. In close collaboration with this teacher we planned and conducted a professional development session for my schoolteachers. This sessionwas received very well and appreciated by teachers. Encouraged by this initiative, we did the same for improvement of math skills (i.e., average, percentage, and ratio) for all teachers, which was again a success. Followed by these professional development initiatives were other in-house sessions on computer literacy, communication skills, pedagogical skills, subject specific and assessment techniques. The topics of these sessions, in fact, were suggested by our teachers, which clearly showed their intrinsic motivation to attend these in-house professional development sessions. Therefore, it is important for head teachers to practice a leadership style that transforms the school into a community of learners. Being the most important person in the school, head teachers are required to earn respect of her/his staff (as well as from his school community) through humility, possessing strong mentoring skills and promoting leadership in all the staff members by delegating them different roles and responsibilities to play in the school improvement processes. Staff encouragement for self-driven PD activities Pedagogical leadership is a powerful approach and an effective alternative to improve schools as it invests in capacity building by developing students social and academic capital and strengthening teachers intellectual and professional capital (Sergiovanni, 1998). Here, the role of head teacher is to create an environment where teachers learn from each other by reflecting on each other’s practices. Along with creating a learning-conducive environment, staff also need encouragement for what they do. This brings motivation to teachers and has direct impact on teacher productivity. As our experience shows that some teachers are money-motivated while others find recognition, appreciation, and rewards as sources of motivation (Ganta, 2014). The encouragement factor helps teachers to be motivated intrinsically and this results in better performance and innovation in their work. There is consensus amongst the researchers today that use of incentives including ‘encouragement’ and ‘recognition’ work as engines driving teachers job satisfaction and motivation, which, in turn, prepare them to work in collaboration with their other peers and colleagues in and outside schools. The intrinsically motivated staff not only develop themselves professionally but also create an environment where they make academic alliances, discuss, and reflect on each other’s practices, go for team teaching, mentoring, and observe classrooms practices and provide feedbacks on each other’s work. Hence, they form a community of learners promoting their intellectual and professional capital, which meets a basic condition needed to create the knowledge society. An appeal to the Head Teachers and teachers on professional development In sum, contrary to the popular notion of always demanding for and relying on the financial resources to initiate professional development of staff in schools, it is primarily head teachers personal desire and commitment to make a difference in the lives of teachers, students and school community, and their vision and motivation to steer their schools to become the “schools-of-choice,” that makes all the difference in achieving the goal of staff professional development. This brief article concludes at offering the following menu of ideas which might help and guide head teachers in initiating and promoting the culture of professional development in schools: Since ‘reading’ is a miraculous process that facilitates and transforms our professional growth, it is important for heads and teachers to become role models for their students in ‘reading,’ and use their ‘example’ to inspire their students (and their parents) to become avid readers; Students of the twenty-first century are good at using technology and they enjoy learning if technology is incorporated in the lessons they are taught.  Hence, there is a dire need to make teachers informed about technological advancements and encourage them to use technology and learning applications through teacher trainings, which should lead to improve students’ learning achievements. In order to develop the school-based professional development culture, head teachers must encourage senior teachers to mentor novice teachers to enhance their pedagogical skills. What is convincingly evident in schools is that the novice teachers are stronger in content knowledge but in most cases lack pedagogical skills. Reflection on actions is the key to learning, therefore, head teachers must make an endeavor to promote a culture of reflective practice in their schools by engaging teachers, students and staff to critically discuss and analyse factors facilitating and/or hindering school improvement processes. Creating leadership opportunities and assigning teachers (students and staff) leadership roles could bring more intrinsic motivation, sense of ownership and a deep sense of joy for being part of the school. Head teachers could form different school-based committees and delegate roles to teachers to perform in these committees. Our experiences have repeatedly shown that this initiative effectively leads to teacher leadership development in schools. Teaching is a dynamic profession, it needs heads and teachers to be proactive planners, strategic thinkers, and agile risk-takers. Head teachers must encourage teachers to bring innovation in their teaching strategies on an ongoing basis by introducing team-teaching, micro-teaching, and cooperative learning techniques. One of the hallmarks of the best performing schools is that they have a culture of compassion, care and growth for all school stakeholders. The head teachers will be required to review and assess the quality of their endeavors to promote such an environment in schools. It is always this culture where the notion of staff professional development blossoms and achieves its noble goals. It is also noteworthy that the culture of compassion cannot be promoted overnight, in fact, it takes constant effort and time to nurture and safeguard it from sliding back to the conventional school milieu. References Belanger, P. (2011). Theories in adult learning and education. Verlag Barbara Budrich. Bredeson, P. V. (2000). The school principal's role in teacher professional development. Journal of In-Service Education, 26(2), 385-401. doi:10.1080/13674580000200114 Ganta, V. C. (2014). Motivation in the work place to improve the employee performance. International Journal of Engineering Technology, Management and Applied Sciences, 2(6), 221-230. Leithwood, K., Harris, A., & Hopkins, D. (2008). Seven strong claims about successful school leadership. School Leadership and Management, 28(1), 27-42. doi:10.1080/13632430701800060 Postholm, M. B. (2012). Teachers' professional development: a theoratical review. Educational Research, 54(4), 405-429. doi:10.1080/00131881.2012.734725 Sergiovanni, T. J. (1998). Leadership as pedagogy, capital development and school effectiveness. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 1(1), 37-46. doi:10.1080/1360312980010104

from Sports News & Discussions and Performances | The Express Tribune https://ift.tt/3pvsr9d

How to ensure teacher professional development in Pakistan

As an Aga Khan University Institute of Educational Development (AKU-IED) Master of Education (M.Ed.) course participant, it was an illuminating experience to participate in the ‘Effective Management Practices’ (EMP) course, which was undoubtedly a journey of transformational learning and deep insights. This course allowed me to reflect on my previous practices as a head teacher, enabled me to question and unlearn the different key aspects of my traditional practices and motivated me to learn new and innovative practices in the field of educational leadership and management. The following text portrays my understanding gained from the EMP course on Teacher Professional Development, which is just one key and insightful aspect of the EMP course offerings; and pray that these ideas enlighten heads, teachers and education providing systems on the need, significance and ways of initiating PD in schools. Professional development of staff broadly refers to providing enabling conditions to staff to enhance their productivity in the various dimensions of their day-to-day responsibilities including those related to their technical and personal spheres of profession. The professional development of teachers could be defined as teachers’ learning: i.e., how they learn to learn, how they reflect on and make meaning from their learning, and how they apply their knowledge to support pupils’ learning (Postholm, 2012). Hence, teacher’s professional development has deep roots in and integrally linked with students’ learning outcomes and their overall achievements and wellbeing. In educational settings teachers play an important role in achieving the goals of teaching and learning processes. However, it is due largely to knowledge growth at an unprecedented speed in the contemporary world that it becomes increasingly difficult for teachers to keep themselves updated on the evolving and rapidly growing knowledge in education. Needless to say, that in their profession teachers have to continuously aspire to grow on an ongoing basis, otherwise, they run the risk of redundancy and decline in their professionalism. Hence, the need for them to grow professionally which could be through engaging in the reflective practices, through self-directed learning, especially increasing their theoretical understanding of the day-to-day issues and trying to put their theories into practice, and/or through availing from time-to-time the formal (i.e. tailor-made) professional development opportunities to ensure their continuous growth and renewal. It is important to bear in mind that teacher professional development is not an event, it is, instead, an ongoing process that needs quality time, conducive environment, necessary resources, ongoing efforts, and critical reflection to gain pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) needed to improve student learning outcomes. Professional development in the school context Learning is an enigmatic process; therefore, it is important to consider how people learn and how the school-based as well as the external conditions shape, influence and determine their learning (Belanger, 2011). What we clearly know today is that learning is guided by our own philosophies of learning such as behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, and social constructivism. These theories/philosophies elaborate how knowledge is perceived, constructed and approached. Teacher professional development primarily involves the task of enabling teachers to challenge their existing beliefs and approaches about the ‘what,’ ‘how,’ ‘why,’ and ‘when’ aspects of their learning processes. What we also know from our experiences of work in AKESP, a prestigious education providing institution of AKDN, is that schools define and deliver professional development based on the analysis of their current needs. So, the needs analysis becomes the first step in determining the goals of teacher professional development. In fact, the Annual School Improvement Plan (ASIP) is used as a tool to identify and define the needs. Generally, the outcomes of the Training Need Analysis (TNA) relate to enhancing teachers content knowledge, upgrading teachers’ pedagogical skills, improving their problem-solving techniques, managing conflicts, engaging teachers in reflective practice, relating student home tasks with their conceptual learning, strengthening teachers’ assessment techniques, helping teachers understand the twenty-first century leaning skills, and augmenting their leadership skills. Role of the Head Teacher in managing staff professional development School leadership has the pivotal role, of course, after classroom teaching, in influencing and shaping student learning. In fact, it helps improve teaching and learning processes indirectly and through their influence on staff motivation, commitment and working conditions (Leithwood, Harris, & Hopkins, 2008).  Therefore, the school leadership role becomes more significant in professional development of staff. Literature identifies four areas where head teachers have substantial impact on teachers learning, these include: head teacher as instructional leader and learner; the creation of learning environment; direct involvement in design, delivery, and content of professional development; and the assessment of professional development outcomes (Bredeson, 2000). Other forms of professional development include motivation from head teacher to improve teachers academic and professional qualifications through distant learning degree programs. This will result in new learnings for staff and help create knowledge societies within the school through sharing of knowledge with colleagues. Also, head teacher could play her/his role in encouraging teachers to develop reading habits and share their knowledge from the literature with colleagues and students. In addition, opportunities for discussions and reflecting on classroom practices in informal sessions also leads to professional development and knowledge creation. Also, in institutions like AKESP head teachers and teachers are also encouraged to design and implement action research projects to improve small yet important learning aspects related to students. Such innovations from head teachers always benefit the teachers, which then helps the organisation to become a learning organisation. In-house professional development programme Head teachers are not indispensable agents and gatekeepers of teacher learning, but they as leaders and learners become role models, coaches, facilitators, and guides to move teachers towards greater and higher levels of independence and professional autonomy (Bredeson, 2000). The traditional, i.e., authoritarian, approach to school leadership style has numerous undesirable consequences including poor results, dwindling teacher motivation, misappropriation of financial resources and expanding the gulf between school and parents. Hence, the need for head teachers to become sources of inspiration and encouragement for their teachers, students and parents. When it comes to providing teachers in-house professional development opportunities, head teachers need to make the best use of pedagogical content knowledge expertise available in their schools to conduct in-house professional development sessions. This requires head teachers to identify the diverse talents their staff possess. In order to share a practical example from my own practices as a head teacher in an AKESP school, I identified that majority of my staff members were not good at using ‘prepositions’ and ‘adjectives’ while speaking and writing English. I discussed this matter with the language teacher at my school who was strong in his content knowledge. In close collaboration with this teacher we planned and conducted a professional development session for my schoolteachers. This sessionwas received very well and appreciated by teachers. Encouraged by this initiative, we did the same for improvement of math skills (i.e., average, percentage, and ratio) for all teachers, which was again a success. Followed by these professional development initiatives were other in-house sessions on computer literacy, communication skills, pedagogical skills, subject specific and assessment techniques. The topics of these sessions, in fact, were suggested by our teachers, which clearly showed their intrinsic motivation to attend these in-house professional development sessions. Therefore, it is important for head teachers to practice a leadership style that transforms the school into a community of learners. Being the most important person in the school, head teachers are required to earn respect of her/his staff (as well as from his school community) through humility, possessing strong mentoring skills and promoting leadership in all the staff members by delegating them different roles and responsibilities to play in the school improvement processes. Staff encouragement for self-driven PD activities Pedagogical leadership is a powerful approach and an effective alternative to improve schools as it invests in capacity building by developing students social and academic capital and strengthening teachers intellectual and professional capital (Sergiovanni, 1998). Here, the role of head teacher is to create an environment where teachers learn from each other by reflecting on each other’s practices. Along with creating a learning-conducive environment, staff also need encouragement for what they do. This brings motivation to teachers and has direct impact on teacher productivity. As our experience shows that some teachers are money-motivated while others find recognition, appreciation, and rewards as sources of motivation (Ganta, 2014). The encouragement factor helps teachers to be motivated intrinsically and this results in better performance and innovation in their work. There is consensus amongst the researchers today that use of incentives including ‘encouragement’ and ‘recognition’ work as engines driving teachers job satisfaction and motivation, which, in turn, prepare them to work in collaboration with their other peers and colleagues in and outside schools. The intrinsically motivated staff not only develop themselves professionally but also create an environment where they make academic alliances, discuss, and reflect on each other’s practices, go for team teaching, mentoring, and observe classrooms practices and provide feedbacks on each other’s work. Hence, they form a community of learners promoting their intellectual and professional capital, which meets a basic condition needed to create the knowledge society. An appeal to the Head Teachers and teachers on professional development In sum, contrary to the popular notion of always demanding for and relying on the financial resources to initiate professional development of staff in schools, it is primarily head teachers personal desire and commitment to make a difference in the lives of teachers, students and school community, and their vision and motivation to steer their schools to become the “schools-of-choice,” that makes all the difference in achieving the goal of staff professional development. This brief article concludes at offering the following menu of ideas which might help and guide head teachers in initiating and promoting the culture of professional development in schools: Since ‘reading’ is a miraculous process that facilitates and transforms our professional growth, it is important for heads and teachers to become role models for their students in ‘reading,’ and use their ‘example’ to inspire their students (and their parents) to become avid readers; Students of the twenty-first century are good at using technology and they enjoy learning if technology is incorporated in the lessons they are taught.  Hence, there is a dire need to make teachers informed about technological advancements and encourage them to use technology and learning applications through teacher trainings, which should lead to improve students’ learning achievements. In order to develop the school-based professional development culture, head teachers must encourage senior teachers to mentor novice teachers to enhance their pedagogical skills. What is convincingly evident in schools is that the novice teachers are stronger in content knowledge but in most cases lack pedagogical skills. Reflection on actions is the key to learning, therefore, head teachers must make an endeavor to promote a culture of reflective practice in their schools by engaging teachers, students and staff to critically discuss and analyse factors facilitating and/or hindering school improvement processes. Creating leadership opportunities and assigning teachers (students and staff) leadership roles could bring more intrinsic motivation, sense of ownership and a deep sense of joy for being part of the school. Head teachers could form different school-based committees and delegate roles to teachers to perform in these committees. Our experiences have repeatedly shown that this initiative effectively leads to teacher leadership development in schools. Teaching is a dynamic profession, it needs heads and teachers to be proactive planners, strategic thinkers, and agile risk-takers. Head teachers must encourage teachers to bring innovation in their teaching strategies on an ongoing basis by introducing team-teaching, micro-teaching, and cooperative learning techniques. One of the hallmarks of the best performing schools is that they have a culture of compassion, care and growth for all school stakeholders. The head teachers will be required to review and assess the quality of their endeavors to promote such an environment in schools. It is always this culture where the notion of staff professional development blossoms and achieves its noble goals. It is also noteworthy that the culture of compassion cannot be promoted overnight, in fact, it takes constant effort and time to nurture and safeguard it from sliding back to the conventional school milieu. References Belanger, P. (2011). Theories in adult learning and education. Verlag Barbara Budrich. Bredeson, P. V. (2000). The school principal's role in teacher professional development. Journal of In-Service Education, 26(2), 385-401. doi:10.1080/13674580000200114 Ganta, V. C. (2014). Motivation in the work place to improve the employee performance. International Journal of Engineering Technology, Management and Applied Sciences, 2(6), 221-230. Leithwood, K., Harris, A., & Hopkins, D. (2008). Seven strong claims about successful school leadership. School Leadership and Management, 28(1), 27-42. doi:10.1080/13632430701800060 Postholm, M. B. (2012). Teachers' professional development: a theoratical review. Educational Research, 54(4), 405-429. doi:10.1080/00131881.2012.734725 Sergiovanni, T. J. (1998). Leadership as pedagogy, capital development and school effectiveness. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 1(1), 37-46. doi:10.1080/1360312980010104

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The Pakistan Stream Gas Pipeline raises Russia’s stakes in South Asia

Last month’s agreement to begin construction next summer of the Pakistan Stream Gas Pipeline – formerly referred to as the North-South Gas Pipeline – shows that Russia is raising its stakes in South Asia. It represents the evolution of its fast-moving rapprochement with Pakistan and gradual movement towards an eventual strategic partnership. The “military diplomacy” between the two which first began due to shared security threats stemming from ISIS’ presence in Afghanistan and then laid the basis for February’s planned multilateral AMAN-2021 naval drills is now transforming into “energy diplomacy”. Moscow is visibly diversifying its regional interests by progressively engaging in mutually beneficial forms of cooperation with Islamabad, which can’t help but draw New Delhi’s attention. The Russian-Indian Strategic Partnership is being tested like never before after influential BJP ideologue Subramanian Swamy’s hateful anti-Russian article last month exposed the ruling party’s split over whether or not to retain their country’s decades-long privileged relationship with Moscow. India’s unofficial response to Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov’s warning about American influence in New Delhi might have even inadvertently worsened growing distrust. It’s against this backdrop that next summer’s planned construction of the Pakistan Stream Gas Pipeline begins to take on a much more strategic significance than most observers might have initially thought. It’s one thing for Russia and Pakistan to stage annual anti-terrorist drills in each other’s countries, as well as participate in multilateral naval drills, and another entirely to invest so significantly in a multibillion-dollar energy infrastructure project. Russia is sending the message that it won’t be deterred by India from establishing tangible stakes in Pakistan’s stability and helping it meet its pressing energy needs. This is the largest Russian investment in Pakistan since the Pakistan Steel Mills project in the middle of the Old Cold War, which was initiated during a thaw in their relations at the time. Unlike then, however, no realistic chances for a geopolitical competition between the two exist anymore since they’re nowadays on the same page regarding Afghanistan, to say nothing of the USSR’s dissolution totally changing Moscow’s strategic calculus towards the region. This observation results in optimistic predictions about the future of their fledgling partnership since even more investments might soon be on the way. Publicly financed Russian international media outlet RT reported a little over a year ago on 9 December 2019 that “Russia looks to invest in Pakistan in a big way” after a 64-member delegation led by Russian Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov “inked their largest-ever cooperation deal, worth billions of dollars, to expand trade and business...It includes huge investments in energy, rail and steel industries.” The publicly disclosed details are scarce but the outlet did reveal that Russia promised to invest a whopping $14 billion in Pakistan’s energy sector, only $2.5 billion of which is for Pakistan Stream. This very strongly suggests that the recently agreed project might be but the first in a series of similar megaprojects all throughout the country over the next decade, which would align with both countries’ complementary balancing strategies vis-a-vis one another. Russia can also show India that it has regional alternatives to that country in the event that New Delhi replaces Moscow’s presence in certain spheres with its Western competitors instead. To be clear, Pakistan is not a replacement for India, but is perceived by Russia as a complementary component of its comprehensive South Asian balancing strategy. Unlike India which dishonestly claims to be “multi-aligning” in order to unconvincingly disguise its pro-Western pivot that it’s carrying out at China’s – and increasingly also Russia’s – expense, Russia is truly embodying that principle by not doing anything which genuinely harms Indian interests. While it’s true that the American-influenced zero-sum mind-set currently prevalent in that country would prefer for Pakistan to never meet its ever-growing energy needs, let alone from Russia, the multipolar-influenced win-win one that India pretends to embrace while engaging with BRICS and the SCO should praise Russia for helping Pakistan in this manner. Officially speaking and overlooking Swamy’s hateful anti-Russian article, the Indian government regularly reaffirms how much it “trusts” Russia so there shouldn't be any problem with it engaging in an apolitical non-military investment such as the Pakistan Stream Gas Pipeline. The regional impact of this megaproject’s successful completion will actually strengthen South Asian stability by improving the lives of tens of millions of average Pakistanis in contrast to the regional impact of India’s de-facto pro-American military alliance through the Quad which stands to upset the regional balance of power with potentially devastating consequences. Nevertheless, it’s understandable that the Indian leadership might feel uncomfortable about this project since they hitherto assumed that they had Russia wrapped around their finger so much that Moscow wouldn’t ever dare to do anything to improve the lives of average Pakistanis, yet the Eurasian Great Power is showing the aspiring South Asian hegemon that it truly practices an independent regional strategy. While the Russian-Indian Strategic Partnership is among Moscow’s most important bilateral relationships anywhere in the world and in fact even in its millennium-long history, the country won’t allow it to be exploited to impede its regional aims. Those said aims are to restore a semblance of balance to South Asia after India’s de-facto military alliance with the US radically changed the status quo. Russia’s balancing act will naturally be imperfect since it doesn’t aspire to replace India with Pakistan which is unrealistic in any case, but it’ll still be important enough to simultaneously show New Delhi that it can’t boss Moscow around any longer while also signalling to Islamabad that it can count on the country for further investments. Russia won’t ever officially participate in CPEC in order to avoid “provoking” India, but megaprojects like Pakistan Stream represent its growing unofficial role in it. The more tangible stakes that Russia obtains in South Asian countries other than India, be they Pakistan or whichever others might soon follow, the more diversified and therefore independent its regional strategy can become. This might ultimately lead to Russia no longer playing second fiddle to India in South Asia but actually becoming an equal player in its own right after showing that it doesn’t depend on New Delhi for relevance. It’ll of course take time for this strategic outcome to unfold and there are veritably several variables that could offset its success, but the prospects are still real promising and could thus revolutionise regional affairs.

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Why did PDM’s Lahore jalsa not live up to expectations?

In the July 2018 general elections, Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PMLN) bagged over 1.37 million votes in the 14 National Assembly (NA) constituencies in Lahore, averaging nearly 100,000 votes per constituency and winning 10 of the 14 NA seats. Similarly, the party dominated all of Lahore’s neighbouring districts, winning three out of four seats in Kasur, three out four in Sheikhupura, one out of two in Nankana, all six in Gujranwala, all five in Sialkot and both the NA seats in Narowal. Overall, PMLN won 20 out of the 23 NA seats in these six districts and on an average got over 100,000 votes per constituency. Lahore and these six adjoining districts accounted for nearly 30% of all the votes PMLN received in the last elections. Therefore, it was no surprise that Lahore was chosen as the venue for the grand finale of the first phase of the opposition’s anti-government movement. Even if PMLN could mobilise a tenth of its vote bank from Lahore and its surrounding districts, the jalsa would exceed 350,000. Add to it whatever the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) can bring, as well as Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s captive madrassah crowd, and the rally would be big enough to set the tone for a fearsome second phase; long march and mass resignations. In fact, if the Lahore jalsa had lived up to its potential, the government would likely have caved in even before the long march, and the opposition would have entered the negotiations from a position of strength. Understandably, it was billed as the “Aar Ya Paar” moment of the campaign by the opposition itself. The number of people that actually attended the jalsa could be anywhere from 5,000 to 500,000 depending on which news outlet or politician you choose to believe. But the shift in political momentum in the one week since the jalsa provides a more authentic assessment of the success or failure of the Lahore show. Since the jalsa, the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) has extended the deadline for Prime Minister Imran Khan’s resignation from December 31st this year to January 31st next year; no date for mass resignations could be announced, and the final decision regarding the much-awaited long march has now been postponed till February 1st. Hence, instead of catapulting the PDM into a fiercer second phase of the movement, the Lahore jalsa seems to have put a damper on the opposition’s plans. The government, on the other hand, instead of being intimidated appears to have gained in confidence; the January 31st deadline was rejected a day after it was announced, opposition’s mass resignations are now being anxiously awaited and the government has announced its intent to hold the Senate elections as soon as legally possible. Clearly, this is not where a successful Lahore jalsa would have left the two camps at. There are several reasons why the PDM’s Lahore jalsa fell well short of expectations. Firstly, the opposition alliance has fashioned its anti-government movement around a narrative that has historically not resonated with the people of Central Punjab. Instead of focusing on inflation, unemployment and poor governance – issues faced by the average Pakistani on a daily basis – the opposition has made the establishment’s involvement in politics the cornerstone of its narrative. While this may have greater currency in smaller provinces, or even in other parts of Punjab, a majority of the GT road belt populace has historically sided with the country’s powerful establishment. In fact, several key leaders of the PMLN – party expected to bring the lion’s share of the crowd to the Lahore rally – do not appear to wholeheartedly support the opposition’s anti-establishment stance either. Several PMLN stalwarts have strong ties to the establishment dating back to the eighties, and while they cannot afford to leave the party, they cannot side with the Maryam Nawaz camp beyond a certain point either. This is probably why several winning horses who were expected to bring tens of thousands of workers to the rally did not deliver. Secondly, the way this jalsa was organised left a lot to be desired. Maryam Nawaz, who was spearheading the mobilisation campaign across Lahore, has never contested an election in her life. While she is effectively heading the party in Pakistan at the moment, until less than five years ago, she was not politically active. Her lack of understanding of, and influence over, key factions within the party’s cadre and the electorate at large significantly dented the on-ground organisation. Historically it was Hamza Shahbaz, the de facto deputy Chief Minister from 2008 to 2018, who was deeply involved in managing the elaborate system of ‘dharnas’ and patronage in Punjab, specifically in Lahore. Currently Hamza Shahbaz is imprisoned, but even if he was not, there is little reason to believe he would lend his support to a Maryam Nawaz led campaign targeting the establishment. A successful rally led and organised by Maryam Nawaz would only further marginalise Hamza Shahbaz, both as a potential heir to the Sharif political legacy and as a leader of the faction that favors a policy of reconciliation with the establishment. Thirdly, the quintessential PMLN worker has historically not been known for running popular movements against powerful adversaries. Traditionally, PMLN has enjoyed overwhelming support from the business community, as well as contract workers and daily wagers, from Central Punjab. For these segments of the electorate, it is not particularly onerous to turn up to the voting booth on a national holiday once every five years. But actively taking part in an anti-incumbent and anti-establishment campaign while risking their own interests is not a very appetising prospect. Therefore, sans the support of the state machinery, converting votes into participation at a political rally against the government turned out to be more difficult for Maryam Nawaz than she would have expected. On top of all this, Lahore’s frigid winter and the fears of a raging pandemic did not help. This is partly why the second phase of the movement has been postponed to a date that will now be announced on February 1st. A successful Lahore jalsa could certainly have turned the tide against the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government. A less than impressive showing, however, has only strengthened the government’s position and has left the opposition with a lot of ground to cover if it plans to challenge the government in any meaningful way come February.

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Why the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn is important in Islamic history

On December 21, 2020, the day of the winter solstice, the world will witness a planetary conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. Though a conjunction of these two planets happens every twenty years or so, rarely do both of them come quite so close to each other or are so clearly visible in the sky. In fact, the last time these two planets appeared in such close proximity was on July 16, 1623; and the last time such a conjunction occurred at night (when it could actually be observed by the naked eye) was March 4, 1226. Now, whilst this rare conjunction may not mean much to most modern observers, planetary conjunctions in general, and the one of Jupiter and Saturn in particular, has held a great deal of importance in Islamic and world history. After all, this was a time when the movements of the planets and the stars were believed to influence human affairs here on earth. Reading their movements therefore held predictive properties. A treatise containing celestial and terrestrial maps produced in 11th century Cairo, for example, held that the inundation of the river Nile could be predicted by observing the velocity of Mars as it passed the sky at the start of the year.[1] The same treatise also suggests regarding the city of Tinnis in the Nile Delta, “This city was founded when Pisces was in the ascendant. The ruler of Pisces is Jupiter, the sign of ultimate felicity, while Venus was in exaltation. For this reason the people of the city are full of joy and happiness. They listen to music, are always delightful, seek comfort and shun anything that causes toil and hardship”.[2] Similar considerations may also have prompted the Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur (d.775) to consult Arab, Persian and Jewish astrologers as to what day and time would be most auspicious for the founding of his capital city Baghdad in 762. But where a great variety of star constellations and planetary conjunctions were believed to bring good fortune to rulers and their subjects, it was the planetary conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn – called ‘the Auspicious Conjunction’ – that had the most political resonance in the medieval and early modern world. Indeed, in a fragmented and crisis-ridden world in which the universal empires of the Abbasids and Mongols no longer existed, Turkmen rulers searched for ideologies other than Abbasid and Chinggisid lineage to legitimise their rule as auspicious and divinely ordained. As a result, various Sufi, astrological, Shi’i, and occult concepts became politically attractive in an unprecedented way[3]. Chief amongst these concepts was this aforementioned conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, which was believed to mark the arrival of a divinely guided universal ruler who would fill the earth with justice and herald the end times, not unlike the Mahdi before the apocalypse. It was based on the belief that this conjunction had occurred around the time Amir Timur (d.1405) was born that the latter became renowned as the sahib-qiran or ‘the Lord of the Auspicious conjunction’[4]. From this point on, the title of Lord of the Auspicious conjunction, and all the connotations of divinely sanctioned, auspicious, saintly and messianic rule it carried, became an indispensible political concept for all Muslim rulers with universal pretentions. Most notably, Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (d. 1666), Ottoman Sultans Suleyman (d.1566) and Murad III (d.1595), and Safavid Shah Ismail (d.1524) all actively claimed it for their own political projects, and cultivated complementary images of themselves as rulers with divine sanction[5]. Far from being a mere curiosity then, the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn was right at the centre of early modern political and historical thought from the Balkans to Bengal[6]. At the close of a year marked by so much havoc and uncertainty in our own times (as well as hope that things might change for the better with the arrival of a Covid-19 vaccine), it is worth remembering how societies in the past attempted to read planetary conjunctions such as that of Jupiter and Saturn in order to predict the future and derive comfort and assurance in trying times. Maybe then, as “the great conjunction” rolls around again and we climb onto our rooftops to catch a fleeting glimpse of this most rare of events, we in the modern world can also, if only for a moment, similarly indulge the more mystically inclined part of ourselves and view the upcoming celestial event as a most auspicious conjunction. [1] Quoted in Yossef Rapoport and Emilie Savage-Smith, Lost Maps of the Caliphs: Drawing the World in Eleventh-Century Cairo, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), p. 69.  [2] Ibid, p. 68. [3] See the introduction to Christopher Markiewicz, The Crisis of Kingship in Late Medieval Islam Persian Emigres and the Making of Ottoman Sovereignty, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). [4] See; Ilker Evrim Binbaş, Intellectual Networks in Timurid Iran: Sharaf Al-Dīn ʻAlī Yazdī and the Islamicate Republic of Letters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), p. 251. [5] Azfar Moin, The Millenial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), Cornell Fleischer, “The Lawgiver as Messiah: The Making of the Imperial Image in the Reign of Süleymân,” in Soliman le magnifique et son temps, ed. Gilles Veinstein. (Paris: Documentation française, 1992), 159-177 and Matthew Melvin‐Koushki, “Early Modern Islamicate Empire: New Forms of Religiopolitical Legitimacy” in Wiley-Blackwell History of Islam and Islamic Civilization, Armando Salvatore, Roberto Tottoli, Babak Rahimi, M. Fariduddin Attar, and Naznin Patel (eds.), (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2018). [6] For more on the Balkans to Bengal complex see; Shahab Ahmed, What is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015) p. 32.

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The bourgeois has left!

At some point young people decided that holding on to a vague sort of feminist/socialist position on social media in lieu of having a conscience (or a personality) was a nice strategy to go about living their otherwise bourgeois super-privileged lives. The fact that these progressive ideas are adhered to only loosely in real life becomes abundantly clear when you consider how these ideas always ever remain theoretical (and fragmentary to boot) and never quite enter the world of practical reality. 

A Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) supporter, say what you will, puts his money where his mouth is. Or, if you wish to be shamed by a more progressive example: Manzoor Pashteen’s supporters are equally ready to confront reality head on in order to change it, putting even life on the line to do so.
The bourgeois leftist lobby is extremely vocal online, but it can collectively be described only as noise, at best. They have their moments in the spotlight when even they will take to the streets, but those are singular annual events or follow the wake of a particularly noteworthy tragedy. 

Rape is a daily occurrence in our country. And it is ignored just as readily by a bourgeois feminist as anybody else. The only instance in recent memory when it was taken up as a cause was when somebody from their own social class became a victim during the recent, terrible motorway incident. Upperclass feminists rolled out in droves when they saw one of their own harmed, and that too only when they recognised that now the threat had become immediate. So long as it keeps happening to working class or lower income class women, you won’t hear a peep from our social justice brigade, much less a protest. In any case, the passion, the rage, the revolutionary fervour lasted five days. And then, nothing. Progressively labelled instagram accounts are now selling merchandise though! Place your orders for your very own feminist hoodie!

But when these so-called progressives do show up to decry any awful event, their slogans mean nothing to the masses and ring hollow even among sympathetic ears. And this takes us back to the idea that there’s something inherently flawed with relying on elitist bourgeois women and men (really the white people of Pakistan) for an education in progressive politics. 
They offer you catch phrases, slogans, quotable quotes, shareable cliches, and labels. Labels that you can toss around to categorise and compartmentalise, censor and condemn. Overused words like ‘problematic’, ‘mansplaining’, and phrases like ‘emotional labour’, ‘internalised misogyny’ and the holy grail of pseudo analysis, the singular all consuming signifier: Patriarchy. Anything and everything even slightly disconcerting is, and always must have been, Patriarchy. Anything and everything with the slightest hint at being wholesome and life affirming is attributed to a vague feminine power with associated laudatory phrases. Essentialising women as some sort of fairy godmothers is ahistorical and frankly stupid. 

Why? Because a binary of women versus men is created in pretty much the same way all populist leaders tend to point to a particular group of really very varied individuals who may or may not have anything to do with the problem at hand and scream: enemy! 
For Trump the enemy was the ubiquitous Immigrant. For Modi it was the Muslim. In Pakistan the enemy is the non-Muslim, or even the Muslim when it’s the Shia or the Ahmedi, or the Pashtoon or the Baloch, OK so really everybody. But for the desi feminist, it is this vague, nebulous constant called Men, ignoring completely the undeniable reality that this category is just as meaningless as any other. Or, when they’re trying really hard to seem nuanced: Patriarchy. But in practice it always comes down to the same.
And this is all done to amass a wealth of online followers, retweets, reposts, and thus gain the illusion of being relevant in an increasingly alienating noisy social media oriented lifestyle. In all these cases, the problem can never be solved. Instead, these linguistic categories are used to create the illusion of control and order. You have something vague to go on and on about to psychologically satisfy yourself. It is at best cathartic. Class takes a backseat to gender. And once that happens, then it’s a toss up between gender, orientation, cis-trans and as many categories of Who Wants to be the Biggest Victim.

These phrases and labels such as they are, must have meant something at some point, but are now used exclusively to shut down conversation, to stem debate and to censor those who do not agree with anything and everything you say. 
This can be seen when questions are raised by those who are avowedly sympathetic to the feminist objective. Coming from a man, criticism is to be ignored, primarily because a man does not possess the correct set of genitals and outward appearance to claim experiential knowledge. This line of reasoning has its merits and demerits. But things take on an absurd colour when women who do possess the necessary accoutrement and experience are labelled as suffering from “internalised misogyny” when their critique begins to target feminist discourse, such as it is, online. What a convenient way to shut down opposition and critique. If it harms any cause it harms the progressive and liberal cause. Conservatives never really bought into your nonsense in the first place. They’re immune.
And frankly, there’s very little difference in tendency between what the overuse of these words and phrases achieves and what TLP’s followers wish to achieve every time they use the word Toheen, or Namoos in a phrase meant to disarm and discredit. Just as when the state labels somebody as a foreign agent or a yahoodi sympathiser. 

TLP silences people with the threat of death.  Liberals silence people with the threat of being cancelled online. The severity of the latter compared to the former may seem ridiculous, perhaps no more than say virtual bullying, but seeing as how so much of bourgeois life (from social to academic to business) is spent online, this can have dire consequences. 

Consider the aunty who teaches at an elite Lahori university and will often be the first to tweet when there’s a point to be scored on the socialist-feminist front, but maintains a deathly silence when her parent institution raises its students’ fee by a staggering 40% during Lockdown 1.0 and she continues maintaining her vow of silence when the institution starts firing low income employees during the same period! Her silence is paid for. 

If Pakistan’s leftists are bourgeois to the max, which they undoubtedly are, Lahore has produced some of the worst most hypocritical, and frankly, most liberal of the lot. The way these soundbites and slogans are used to fire the imagination of young people, especially students, only to use their strength of numbers to establish the reputation of the purveyor of these soundbites and slogans as a cult leader is frankly damning evidence that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. 

Not only are you creating a large mass of semi literate cultists, you’re pretty much following the model of the extreme right wing conservative. The only difference is in language and vocabulary. 

Only the most destitute and decadent of minds would try to fix your use of language while the world starves or lies helpless without shelter, unable to breathe air that has achieved a state far beyond all acceptable levels of toxicity. This is another hallmark of the liberalised left: Their focus is on inserting asterisks in the word rape. To achieve what?! To signal how sensitive they are to our feelings. What a way to infantilise everybody who has a functioning brain. Just say the word you mean, you clown! 

The truth is, the enemy is not the Mexican, the Muslim (or the various sects thereof), the enemy is not the fact that you said a naughty word, nor the neighbour across the border. The enemy is the capitalist mode of production. Whether you’re white, brown, black, gay, trans, or frankly a cow in a factory farm, you are all one, united in the fight against Capital. And you have less than seven years left to figure this out or the world will end. 

But, all we have are these self-promoting cult leaders and influencers drowning out reason and debate. What worries me is not that these people are fame-whores. What worries me is that they’re willing to squander a position of influence that could have been better served to move the discussion back to the critique of Capital. 

The liberation of woman is impossible, without the liberation of humankind. It’s not going to happen. The fact that some of the most vile MNC’s on earth project an outwardly feminist, queer, trans friendly face should be sufficient evidence that this is so.

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Why PDM’s resignation gamble could backfire

Political temperatures are high, and with the opposition parties’ anticipated announcement of resignations from the National Assembly, one can safely assume that there will be no respite. Following the fundamentals of politics, the opposition, under the banner of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), is desperately endeavouring to gain traction by promising their supporters a swift victory which is not yet in sight, and for which a coordinated and calculated political struggle is essential.

However, it is apparent from the PDM press conference held on December 8^th that the president of the PDM, Maulana Fazalur Rehman, has succeeded in convincing key opposition parties to tender their resignations from the National Assembly. As per the announcements made in the aforementioned press conference, opposition members, whose parties are a member of the PDM alliance, shall submit their resignations to their respective party leaders by December 31, 2020.

It is imperative to note that under Article 64 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, a member may “by writing under his hand addressed to the Speaker… resign his seat, and thereupon his seat shall become vacant”.

At this juncture, two questions arise: (1) what will be the impact on PDM if a number of its members refuse to tender their resignations (2) what benefit could PDM potentially achieve if all the concerned opposition members follow suit and resign? The first question is that of a political nature, whereas the latter requires legal analysis.

It would not be wrong to assume that PDM will receive a devastating blow if around 20-30% of its members fail to submit their resignations. Not only will their narrative suffer but the pressure they are desperately attempting to mount on the incumbent government, with some degree of success, would also lose force. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government will instantly claim a moral victory, and its army of spokespersons, with the help of a very effective media cell, would mount a vicious attack against the opposition, without the fear of any repercussions. The likelihood of events being played out in a manner is entirely possible considering what happened during the no-confidence motion brought against the Chairman of the Senate of Pakistan recently.

If what has been narrated above does happen, the political uncertainty and upheaval that would follow must be understood and appreciated by the concerned quarters. PDM would be left with no other alternative but to commence a nationwide agitation movement in order to save face. All the red lines will be crossed by PDM’s leaders and no institution could possibly be expected to escape unscathed. As the Vice President of PML-N, Maryam Nawaz, has indicated, members who failed to tender their resignation could possibly expect their houses surrounded by angry party loyalists. The PTI government’s admitted failure to keep the inflation in check coupled with the sugar and flour crises could theoretically be exploited by the opposition parties.

The “Vote ko izat do” slogan could gain more popularity. As a strategic move, PDM may instigate riots in order to exert more pressure on the establishment. It will dedicate all its resources and political capital to ensure that its long march attracts a large number of crowds, with its final destination being D-Chock, Islamabad. And if the PTI government blunders into ordering the police force or other security agencies at its disposal to adopt confrontational and aggressive tactics to curtail PDM activists, as a consequence of which a precious life is lost, then the situation could become perilous.

This will not be a good position for PTI to be in, nor will the country benefit from such political uncertainty. Pakistan’s struggling economy, which is already on life support, might not be able to sustain or accommodate such a political cataclysm. Not to mention that our ongoing fight against Covid-19 will suffer greatly, causing our health sector to capitulate under pressure. The democratic powers must not forget that the “doctrine of necessity”, from which almost all the parties have benefited, is hanging over their heads like a sword. It is up to them to ensure that democracy prevails and if they fail in doing so, they will not be worthy of forgiveness.

Considering that better sense prevails and the opposition members are allowed to tender their resignations, without any external intervention whatsoever, PTI would be in a much better position. As per Article 58 of our Constitution, the President can dissolve the Parliament if so “advised by the Prime Minister” or where a no-confidence vote has been passed against the Prime Minister and “no other member of the National Assembly commands the confidence of the majority of the member of the National Assembly…”. If PTI plays its cards right and does not allow PDM to mount unsustainable pressure, there exists no reason which would compel Prime Minister Imran Khan to issue such advice to the president. Moreover, if all PDM members do resign from their seats, such a situation will not, rather, does not, give rise to a constitutional crisis.

As per Article 55 of our Constitution, the National Assembly shall only become defunct if during the sitting of the Assembly it is brought to the attention of the person presiding that less than “one-fourth” of the total members are in attendance. At present there are 332 seats in the National Assembly, which means if 83 members are present, the National Assembly will function as normal. Legally speaking, assuming that all members of PDM resign, along with, for argument’s sake, 30% or 40% of PTI members, it still would not have any effect on the legal standing of the prime minister or the PTI government. Moreover, for the sake of better understanding PTI’s legal position, if it is assumed that only 50 members of PTI are left in the National Assembly, whereas all other members of the National Assembly have resigned, it still would not matter as long as none of the remaining 50 members bring the quorum issue to the attention of the person presiding over the session.

In light of the above, a conclusion can be derived that PDM will not benefit a great deal from tendering resignations and, perhaps, has attached undue weightage to this strategy. At most, there will be some political consequences and questions may be raised with reference to the PTI government’s legitimacy to rule over the people of Pakistan. At best, if PDM follows through with the resignation strategy, the alliance of the parties under the banner of PDM would be strengthened and they will have no other option but to work together and for a common goal which in turn will make PDM more determined to send off the current government. On the contrary, PTI could potentially stall the resignation process as was done by the former Speaker, Mr Ayaz Sadiq, by requiring all the members to attend the Speaker’s office in order to verify their resignations. It seems that PTI is trying to test the waters and believes that PDM will not resign. If it does, they may be able to buy time and selectively accommodate and neutralise the threat.

In the end, no matter what route the opposition or the government takes, they will need to sit together and address their differences. Problems can only be solved through a consultative process which, unfortunately, no party is willing to pursue at this stage. The political vacuum continues to grow, allowing non-democratic forces to further strengthen their grip over the system. The only issue that all our political parties are concerned with is free and fair elections, which by no means is any less important than other issues. However, the said issue, like all other issues, can only be resolved through political will and with the purest of intentions, something which has been lacking among our political elite for decades.

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How Kaavan attained freedom after 35 years

Kaavan, now probably the most famous elephant in the world, has safely reached his new retirement home, the Cambodia Wildlife Sanctuary. There are pictures of him walking around his new home at dusk. He must be disoriented after the seven hour flight but animals adapt quickly to their surroundings. After his quarantine, he will gradually be introduced to the three female Asian elephants already at the sanctuary.

For the local and international activists who have been demanding his freedom for years, this must be an extremely emotional time. For the Government of Pakistan, especially the Ministry of Climate Change who facilitated his departure (with the military helping with the logistics), it is a relief that he has reached safely. After 35 years in Islamabad Zoo, where he was treated abysmally, the current leadership feels that he deserves to enjoy his retirement years and live in peace in the company of other elephants.

There is no doubt that the singer Cher played a vital role in his freedom with all her tweets and campaigning since 2015. Kaavan was very lucky indeed to have drawn the attention of one the world’s biggest pop divas. Let’s not forget that there are over 600 zoos in the world and 194 of these have elephants; around 50 have solitary elephants. These are facts given to me by forester Syed Rizwan Mehboob who says he is hurt by the negative publicity which Pakistan is getting as news items like “Loneliest Elephant released from Pakistan” are flashed across the globe. I personally think zoos are a dated concept given that we are in the midst of a global, manmade 6^th mass extinction of plants and animals.

At any rate, Islamabad Zoo was ordered to be shut down by the Islamabad High Court back in May 21, 2020 and the animals be shifted to “sanctuaries” within the next 60 days. The problem was that there are no proper animal sanctuaries in Pakistan as such. During the shifting two lions died which created an outcry. The Islamabad Zoo is now closed to the public and the Islamabad Wildlife Management Board (IWMB) is considering future options for it that will be in keeping with the best international practices.

The government decided to sign all the necessary permissions and send Kaavan to an elephant sanctuary in Cambodia as Pakistan does not have one. It would take a couple of years to build an elephant sanctuary and to train the staff. Kaavan was our sole Asian elephant; the other 4 elephants in zoos across Pakistan are from Africa. Kaavan couldn’t be kept in the company of African elephants. Elephants are social animals but one can’t put Asian and African elephants together. Kaavan’s mate Saheli (another Asian elephant from Sri Lanka) died in 2012 and he had been alone since then.

It was Cher’s Free the Wild foundation that sent the Four Paws International team headed by the very competent Dr Amir Khalil to Islamabad back in August this year (in the midst of a pandemic) to look after the elephant and plan for his relocation to Cambodia. Dr Amir won over Kaavan with his love and patient care, not to mention his singing and helped him to lose weight to ready him for his departure.

Finally the big day arrived on the 29^th of December. But to everyone’s surprise, two days before Kaavan’s departure date, Cher herself arrived in Islamabad. No one was sure she would actually travel here during the second wave of the coronavirus. Cher arrived quietly and stayed at a local 5 star hotel. She wanted to meet PM Imran Khan to thank him personally for the release of the elephant and this was arranged by the Special Assistant to the PM on Climate Change, Malik Amin Aslam.

The IWMB then facilitated Cher’s visit to the Islamabad Zoo the day before Kaavan’s departure where she met Kaavan in person for the first time and sang to him. Dr Amer introduced the elephant to her and she shed tears while hearing his story and feeding him. She later thanked the IWMB for the facilitation and especially thanked Malik Amin’s wife for her husband’s help in releasing the elephant. She took pictures with us and that broke the ice for the local activists who also wanted pictures with the super star.

Cher singing to Kaavan the day before his departure to Cambodia.

Cher was very sweet, graciously agreeing to take pictures with everyone who mustered up the courage to approach her, although her security had earlier warned people that no cameras would be allowed in her presence. You see Cher was making her own documentary on Kaavan’s journey with the Smithsonian channel that will be released in 2021 and there were copyright issues. She was clearly thrilled to have met Kaavan and really seemed to have a deep connection with him. She stayed late at the zoo, filming interviews and meeting with the local activists. All this was done in peace as the zoo had been shut down for the local media.

Cher takes a picture with Amna Amin and me after her tour of the Islamabad Zoo.

The next day, the date of Kaavan’s departure, the media had to be allowed in and despite being invited to speak at a joint press conference by both the Ministry of Climate Change and the Four Paws team, Cher decided not to join in. In fact, she gave no interviews to the media throughout her trip and other than shooting her own documentary she kept to herself. Such is the life of a super star who has to be careful about her image and security! She was very happy about being able to shoot her documentary, however, and her team conveyed their gratitude. She left the next day in order to be able to reach Cambodia in time to welcome Kaavan.

The day of Kaavan’s departure was a tense day. The media, both local and international, was clamoring for pictures and information and had to be given access to the zoo even though Kaavan needed to be carefully prepped for the long journey. At the last minute his cargo plane had to land at the international airport instead of Nur Khan air base. The plane had to make a mandatory stop in New Delhi on its way to Cambodia as permission for a fly over was not granted in time. Also Kaavan had to be sedated and yet kept active enough to be able to move him into his specially designed container.

Kaavan in his container, ready for his journey to Cambodia.

Kaavan inside the container, leaving Islamabad Zoo and heading to the airport.

German expert Frank Gortz, who came from Austria for the translocation of Kaavan, was the elephant expert who helped Dr Amir along with the Four Paws team. The staff of the IWMB also helped along with local activists. It took a team effort to finally pull the five and a half tons Kaavan into his container with ropes and have the container lifted by a crane onto a trawler. The media refused to budge from the zoo as they needed to cover the story. Finally at 9pm the trawler, now under the protection of the military, left for Islamabad International Airport with a convoy. At 4.30 am his plane departed for Cambodia.

All’s well that ends well and with Kaavan arriving safely at his sanctuary, Cher’s Free the Wild organisation has formally invited the SAPM Amin Aslam to visit him in Cambodia and see their model for eco-tourism. As for the nearly empty Islamabad Zoo, we are now planning to make it into a new facility and eventually bring back the other animals being kept at various locations in Islamabad. It will be more along the lines of a conservation centre and the focus would be on indigenous species. We are not planning to import any more wild animals into Pakistan.

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All photos courtesy of the author.

from Sports News & Discussions and Performances | The Express Tribune https://ift.tt/2Jw9WBY

Uttar Pradesh’s ‘love jihad’ law is a victory for the BJP

India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh passed a law in late November criminalising religious conversions by marriage that aren’t approved by a district magistrate in a move that spits in the face of the country’s secular traditions. Although not stated in the text itself, the move was made in response to what Hindu radicals have alleged is a secret so-called “love jihad” conspiracy by Muslims to massively convert Hindu women to Islam. There’s absolutely no basis whatsoever for alleging anything of the sort, but as the Washington Posted noted in a recent op-ed about how “The hateful love ‘jihad’ conspiracy in India is going mainstream”, these groundless claims are being propagated to further radicalise Indian society.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has overseen India’s transformation from a constitutionally secular state to a de-facto Hindu nationalist one. This development has raised serious concerns among the country’s nearly 200 million Muslims that they’ll soon be doomed to second-class status or worse. Examples adding credence to their claims are last year’s Citizenship (Amendment) Act which officially discriminates against Muslim refugees by prioritising the granting of citizenship to non-Muslim ones from nearby countries. The National Register of Citizens also runs the risk of effectively stripping the citizenship of former Muslim refugees and their descendants who moved to India several decades ago but might have lost their documents over the years.

The “love jihad” fear-mongering campaign is the next step in the Indian government’s Islamophobic crusade. No state that’s constitutionally secular should meddle in interfaith relationships, nor should its representatives encourage radicalised members of their civil society to harass and harm those who participate in such. Religion is obviously a very sensitive subject for many people regardless of their faith, and interfaith relationships can be very controversial in many families, but these are private matters to be dealt with behind closed doors between consenting adults, not public ones where the government or even strangers have the right to interfere. If India was a constitutionally Hindu state then the standard might be different, but it isn’t since it’s officially secular.

Therein lies the primary contradiction since India is essentially behaving as a religious state even though its representatives routinely criticise many majority-Muslim countries like Pakistan whose laws are influenced by religious teachings. That’s a blatant double standard which proves that those attacks against others were never made on a sincerely secular basis. They were just intended to radicalise the domestic masses and virtue signal to India’s new Western allies that it deserves to be seen as their international equal after showing that it shares their suspicions of Islam. By implementing its own religiously influenced legislation, India is trading its secular reputation for a Hindu nationalist one which aims to boost its Islamophobic credentials in the eyes of the West.

What’s especially concerning about all of this is the silence from most members of the international community, especially Western countries. They always make a fuss about “spreading democracy” and protecting “human rights”, yet potentially tens of millions of couples in constitutionally secular India’s Uttar Pradesh no longer have the right to freely choose their spouse without worries that the government will reject their relationship and civil society might even lynch them just for falling in love with the “wrong” person. These same countries that are now silent are usually very outspoken at even the slightest indication that religious minorities in Muslim-majority states might be mistreated, which confirms their ulterior motives all along.

With this in mind, it can therefore be said that India has practically become a Western country. It receives a free pass from its peers for its domestic hypocrisy, and just like them, it also treats Muslims as second-class citizens. If Russia for example were to have imposed similar legislation in its largest region criminalising the conversions of Orthodox Christian women to Islam by marriage without government permission, then it would immediately become the world’s top “human rights” issue and sanctions might even be threatened against Moscow unless it reversed its policy. India, however, can criminalise the conversion of Hindu women to Islam by marriage without government permission in its largest region and know that its Western allies will never condemn it.

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Indian farmers are rising up against Modi’s ‘Great Reset’

The Indian capital saw heated clashes on Friday after security forces fired tear gas and water cannons to stop a farmers’ march that was descending on the city from different parts of the country, most from the agriculturally rich region of Punjab. The farmers are furious after the government’s so-called “reforms” in September liberalised the market for their goods, which they fear will eventually lead to the state removing its subsidies for their industry and thus placing them at the mercy of uncontrollable market forces that seek to exploit them. While the authorities claim that they have the farmers’ best interests in mind, it’ll be argued in this analysis that they don’t, and that they actually aim to destroy them for self-interested political and economic reasons.

The full-spectrum paradigm-changing processes catalysed by the world’s uncoordinated efforts to contain Covid-19, which the author collectively refers to as World War C, has created an opportunity for some forces to push through radical pre-planned agendas that were just waiting for the proper pretext. The World Economic Forum (WEF) nowadays openly talks about a so-called “Great Reset”, which is proudly pushed by its founder Klaus Schwab who literally published a book over the summer titled “Covid-19: The Great Reset”. It’s not a “conspiracy theory” like critics claim, but is simply a strategy for capitalising on the prevailing chaotic conditions of the contemporary world to advance prior plans that might not have been popular under other conditions.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also has his own “Great Reset” that he hopes to impose upon the population, and it too precedes the onset of World War C. His radical vision aims to rapidly neoliberalise the economy, which would be akin to what Russia suffered immediately after the end of communism during its period of “shock therapy”. Subsidies would be dramatically scaled down and ultimately removed in order to let the so-called “invisible hand of the market” guide the country’s development. The effect that this would have on the Indian agricultural sector would be disastrous since it would crush this segment of society and lead to its eventual replacement by large-scale corporate agricultural forces, some of which might even be foreign-owned.

The ruling BJP fears the influence that farmers hold over society, hence their interest in politically neutralising them by practically removing this class from existence through these means. It knows very well that they have the power to bring the government to its knees and to possibly form the core of a nationwide protest movement sometime in the future. Domestic conditions are very tense in India nowadays after a growing segment of the population is becoming increasingly unhappy with the government’s response to World War C. The farmers’ protest might be the spark that incites wider unrest if it isn’t contained as soon as possible, which explains why the authorities are resorting to the use of force to stop their march on the capital.

This isn’t a new observation either since the author has been covering Indian social movements for the past few years and arrived at similar conclusions in the past. The reader is encouraged to review what he wrote in September 2018 about how “India’s Arrest Of Leftist Activists Shows Its Fear Of Social Revolution” and his follow-up piece from July 2019 predicting that “India’s Looming Agricultural Crisis Is A Unique Chance To Change The System”. Modi’s promised “big bang reforms” form the basis of this year’s neoliberal-driven “Great Reset”. They’re actually one and the same, but he wisely calculated that the agricultural dimension of this vision would provoke widespread unrest from farmers unless he pushed it through during crisis conditions.

World War C was the perfect pretext for doing so, but the farmers weren’t going to be fooled and thus decided to make a powerful stand in opposition to the policy that aims to spell their professional doom. As the author wrote in his previously cited analysis about changing the system, the large-scale unemployment of farmers that would follow Modi’s “big bang” (nowadays more accurately described as his “Great Reset”) and their resultant mass migration to the cities out of desperation to sell their labour to feed their families would totally change Indian society, but not for the better. The farmers therefore know what’s in store for them if they fail in their efforts to get the government to reverse this policy, which is why they’re rising up against the “Great Reset”.

It’s too early to tell whether they’ll succeed in this goal or if they’ll inspire others to join them in assembling what the author also earlier described in his cited works as a “coalition of malcontents”, but considering the fact that many of the farmer are from Punjab, then the central government’s crackdown against them in parallel with its plans to ruin their profession through Modi’s “big bang” (“Great Reset”) could lead to more of them supporting the Khalistani cause. The Indian government is thus goring itself on the horns of a dilemma entirely of its own making by either standing back and risking the scenario that furious farmers form the core of a “coalition of malcontents” or cracking down on them more harshly and thus pushing them towards Khalistan.

from Sports News & Discussions and Performances | The Express Tribune https://ift.tt/3lcqX1a

How to reform Pakistan’s agriculture sector

Agriculture policymaking in Pakistan has been in disarray for decades. Progress is static, contradictions constant and reform evasive. Hence, it does not come as a surprise that the sector has failed to keep pace with demand growth and the country has continued to trail its peers in yields per hectare.

The limelight has been afforded to these challenges due to the unflattering macroeconomic implications, and grim repercussions elsewhere, but the ensuing discourse has broadly focused on cause-and-effect iterations. Covid-19 and locust attacks have been designated, resultantly, as the roots of the problem. Conferring blame on nature suits policymakers, of course, as it systematically absolves them, at least partially, from political culpability.

It should be obvious to any keen observer, however, that deficient crop yields instigating an upsurge in food inflation is not a product of rare circumstantial debacles but rather an inevitable detonation of a tinderbox. For instance, the surge in wheat prices is directly attributable to the demand-supply gulf that has developed on the back of steadily growing demand and static supply. In 2011, Pakistan produced 25.214 million tonnes of wheat which has remained virtually unchanged at 24.946 million tonnes in 2020. With the country having been compelled to import 3 million tonnes of wheat, this could only, theoretically, entail demand surpassing domestic supply and therefore necessitating import.

Of course, statistical inaccuracies in estimations are the talk of the town. But if the production has not budged in the last decade, and demand can be reasonably assumed to have increased steadily with the population, why does it come as a surprise that the country’s indigenous yield is not adequate to satisfy consumption requirements?

With Minimum Support Prices (MSPs) acting as the cornerstone of the state’s food security strategy for the better part of the last decade, the emergence of a demand-supply disparity was all but preordained. The fact that the MSP has done nothing to augment the crop yield is hard to ignore given both the cultivated area and total production remaining virtually stagnant over the last decade. Moreover, its redistributive utility in buttressing farmers’ incomes is at best ineffective and futile.

What the regulators need to understand is that in order to ensure sustainable growth in agriculture, they need to lend support directly to farmers in enhancing productivity. Price floors are nothing short of counterproductive market distortions which have only accrued benefits to eminent landowners who usually end up capitalising on their political clout in securing floor prices for their produce, and commercial banks, that are allowed to expand their top-lines by financing procurement schemes. It becomes urgent, then, especially in the backdrop of widening demand-supply deficit, to prioritise growth in productivity by deploying policies which entail direct benefit to farmers in reducing costs of farm inputs and enhancing productive efficiency.

The government’s announcement of a direct fertiliser subsidy in May indicated the realignment of regulatory direction, a commendable evolution in a sector marred by regressive policymaking. The idea was reinforced when the government decided to restrict subsidies to only phosphate and potassium fertilisers, which have historically exhibited price elasticity and require greater attention to improve the NPK ratio in application. Such decision-making seemed to foreshadow a paradigm shift in agriculture policymaking, an essential switch in context as it seemed to portend a more deliberate and targeted formulation of agriculture policy.

The subsequently unfolding chaos, however, seems to have unnerved incumbents both politically and administratively. The dilly-dallying in decision-making on the obvious shortfall in key staples exacerbated the situation, triggering a surge in inflation, as the government scrambled to instate short term fixes. The approval of a substantial hike in MSPs, then, seems to be a knee-jerk reflex that successive governments have embraced all too often over the last decade. The counter-intuitive essence of it seems to be lost on an administration hustling for political currency.

But the political landscape does not change the fundamentals, neither does it allow the incumbents to prioritise its popular image over the agriculture sector’s outlook. The policymakers need to reconsider the grave ramifications of their decisions: an 18% hike in the MSP has to be financed. With contracting fiscal space and International Monetary Fund (IMF) restrictions, it would most likely translate into retail prices, fuelling inflation; the last thing on the government’s wish list. Moreover, it’s unlikely to increase wheat cultivation, a scenario that policymakers hope for with the timing of the decision, which has remained essentially consistent over the last decade despite multiple increments in the MSP.

And if the economic baggage of a futile market intervention wasn’t enough, the Sindh government seems well on its way to escalating the anomaly. By fixing the provincial MSP at PKR2000/40kg, it has all but sanctioned double-digit inflation in the next marketing year. Again, for political optics or other reasons, policymakers seem to have disregarded the price inelasticity of wheat supply.  

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