Order and Anarchy

They say that history teaches some great lessons and those who are wise, heed carefully to history’s lessons. But I seriously doubt that Pakistan, or to be specific, the power brokers over here, have learned much from history.

The soul – less and embarrassing surrender of the mighty Pakistan Army has only been taken as a matter of routine. Instead of serving as a food for thought, that shameful date has been discarded to rot in the nation’s short memory.

Only some more than 30 years out of 16th December 1971, and I find us committing the whole set of similar acts that led to the fall of Dhaka. The same sense of deprivation is felt by some sections of the society as was there previously. The same politics is being played that pits one province against another. And the same sort of rulers rule the country.

Instead of realizing that it is the military that has always played havoc with national politics more than anyone else, we continue to embrace that same military dictatorship with open arms. Before the fall of Dhaka, there were Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan, whose style of doing things culminated in the creation of Bangladesh. The Pakistani nation should have seen the evil. But it hasn’t. After 1971, we have continued to harbour military in the place of governance. Zia – ul – Haq gave 11 years of nightmare to the country, plus a dark legacy of sectarian and religious strife from which the nation hasn’t yet recovered. And now, we have the Musharraf regime on our laps, striving to create the same kind of strife as was there three decades ago.

We haven’t yet learned the lesson that law remains ever – supreme and nobody’s above it. Instead, we see the same fellows who claim to be the ultimate guardians, trample upon the Constitution of the land mercilessly at their whim. The present Constitution, which was drafted in the aftermath of the tragedy of 1971, has been much disfigured crazily – the same scenario of playing around with the law of the land that was the norm in the pre – 1971 days of military regimes.

Guaging from the military’s performance in 1971, it should have been made more efficient. Instead of it being made a more perk dependent institution, the military should have been made to do some soul searching and divert its attention from getting the riches and mundanenss of the civilian life to the efficiency and integrity of the battle field and respect for law.

But alas! what we see today of the Pakistani military, is a bunch of greedy fellows bent upon making the ultimate buck and turning the country into a military state. I don’t say that the whole lot has rotten to this extent. But how many soldiers and low rank officials are there presently in the military who own plots in various military residential schemes? But I’m sure that every high ranking official must be bathing in this sea of pelf. And these are the same chunks of land that are at the center – stage of the filthy real estate scandal currently sweeping the country.

There was a need of curtailing this trend and reducing the fat and overly hungry military bureau, but it hasn’t been done till now. It seems that we have grown to love militarism.

But time is not lost yet. Our national thought should get matured now and we should stop taking mere utterences on their face value. There is still time for us to look inside ourselves.

Defeat is never bad. It’s part of the game. And it’s not important if one faces defeat. The important thing is that one take some lessons out of defeat and look for reasons behind it and never commit the same mistakes that led to it.

Semester exams done with today, I feel somewhat relieved. Classfellows oganized a lunch at Purple Haze after the paper but I didn’t feel like going, so I took my way to home. Almost half the class was willing to go.

I returned to home, had my lunch and took time to rest. I was thinking regarding my performance in the exams, the marks I was getting and about the feeling that my marks were inadequate. This is the first time in my life when I’ve felt that getting 85 or 86 marks ot of 100 is inadequate. One would feel how thankless I am by not being content. But that’s the way this system works. It makes pupils to literally die for one – tenth of a mark.

I feel that this system of masuring GPA emphasizes too much on getting more and more marks by any means. Although it pomotes competition and keeps the students on their toes, it also creates undue pressures on the students’ psychology. Coupled with this, callous attitude from teachers regarding proper teaching cmpounds problems for students.

Dr. Ishrat – ul – Ibad Khan, the all governing governor of the province of Sind, yesterday decreed that an ordinance by the name of Sindh Local Government (Amendment) Ordinance 2005 be implemented in the province. Among other things, this piece of legislation vests the chief executive (the Chief Minister) of the province with the power to do away with the decisions and/or orders of the Zila Nazim (Mayor), as and when he desires. It also provides for referring a case to the Provincial Local Government Commission for investigations and recommendations. It further adds:

“On receipt of inquiry report conducted by the PLGC, the chief executive of the province may take such action as deemed expedient in the light of such report, including quashment of the order or decision of the zila nazim.”

So here we go…another step towards the crippling of a system that’s running on artificial respiration.

I think that it furthers the cause of creating and strengthening rifts between the provincial and city governments. Thus, from now on, the nazims have another sword hanging on their heads.