I used to live in Karachi in my younger days and a place called Havmore or Eatmore Ice Cream on Tariq Road used to be a pleasant activity. when i thought about it asked to drink less tea,
It is the memory of old Pakistan where you were asked to do much more and could have been done. We are now living in Naya Pakistan and are constantly told that they still don’t have more or less. I mean, you seriously want to eat cheese?
So, if we are already living in Naya Pakistan, what will Naya Naya Pakistan be like? Will we be informed not to play golf and stay in our SUV?
The journey from old to new, from the sublime, relatively speaking, to the ridiculous, was already captured quite clearly, albeit unintentionally, by the title of the 1980 book Jinnah lived Incidentally, written by the same person who inspired the lineage.
Why has the quality of human capital declined in Pakistan?
This story was repeated by Intizar Hussain in his 50-year retrospective of the literary history of Pakistan (Charaghon Ka Dhuan) His most important decision was related to witnessing a change in the culture of the Pak Tea House in Lahore, which was an artists’ haven: in 1950, he wrote, the waiters had the sensibilities of poets; By 2000, the poets had the sensibilities of waiters.
Intijar Hussain too attributed this decline to the quality of leadership in the country. In another memorable phrase, he lamented the absence of people of stature (qad wale log) and their replacement by pygmy (bauney,
This may be an oversimplification but the deterioration in the quality of leadership cannot be denied. This may very well be because each leader in power has chosen someone of lesser ability as a deputy and—yes—a group of individuals as enforcers. Or, alternatively, without question the person who is most likely to bid gets approved by the brokers. Humayun had the good sense to limit the reign of Nizam Sakka to at least two days.
This is an admirable dynamism in a country where leaders do not earn authority from office by display of any ability; Often his first real job is to become chief minister or prime minister, under the advice that he should be given a chance to prove himself. That’s how democracy works in Pakistan. I feel that I would be labeled undemocratic for not giving my bike for repairs, which was in the process of proving my worth at my expense.
We are aware of the reality of how our leaders are chosen, elected and denied the franchise, but the decline in competence is not limited to leadership. The real and more serious question is why the quality of human capital has declined across the board in Pakistan. What is the reason behind reversing the roles of waiters and poets in Intezar Hussain’s Pak Tea House?
It seems reasonable to argue that nations develop when each new generation is more knowledgeable and better trained than its predecessors. Countries like South Korea and China support that premise. In Pakistan, one does not see that progress; Conversely, each new group comes across as intellectually poor.
It is difficult to trace this phenomenon to what is happening with schooling. Virtually all questions and creativity have been sucked out of it over the years and replaced by dogma, doctrine and non-critical acceptance of officially accepted narratives.
It may be unbelievable to some that in the old Pakistan of Eatmore Ice Cream, ethics were not taught in schools. In Naya Pakistan, in contrast to the practice of drinking less tea in most other countries, morality has permeated every subject. Today, the Critical Thinking Practice in a Class IV English textbook asks students at what age Hazrat Ali converted to Islam. And yet, the trade-off has been unfavourable. The standard of morality has not increased, while all other subjects, which have had to devote time, have suffered.
What is driving this trend? This may sound strange but it can be explained from the perspective of political economy. Education is not independent of politics and schooling is a powerful instrument of maintaining its hegemony in the hands of the state; The more oppressive the state, the more education is used to inspire and legitimize its narrative.
Thus a fatal reaction occurs: the capture of power by an intellectual dwarf suppresses a free-thinking education and a repressed education produces an even greater intellectual dwarf.
There is no way to escape this double bond in Pakistan. Every new Pakistan will make us yearn for the old one. For now, drink less tea and don’t even think about cheese.
The author is the author of What We Get Wrong About Education in Pakistan.
Published in Dawn, June 19, 2022