The turnout at the walk organised last Sunday by Citizens against Weapons (CAW) was heartening. Started in 2014 by some concerned citizens, the campaign is catching on. I had joined them at a rally on an intersection of a busy area in Karachi two years ago. There were then barely 50 protesters. On Sunday, there were 400 or so.

Zubeida Mustafa

One of CAW’s key demands is, “In compliance with Article 256 of the Constitution, all private militias regardless of their patrons must be completely disbanded.”

This is a valid demand, in view of the private militias that have mushroomed all over Pakistan. One doesn’t know whether they carry licensed weapons or illegally acquire guns which have flooded the country since 1979.

What steps are being taken to eliminate sectarian violence?

The emergence of private militias is a disturbing development and has ominous implications when we consider sectarian violence in Pakistan. Various lashkars and sipahs was linked to the targeting of Shia doctors in the 1990s and the suicide bombings of Shia congregations. Such groups change their name whenever they are banned but their sectarian bias does not change.

The government might be trying hard to provide protection to this community but how much can it do? Thus Arbayeen (Imam Husain’s chehlum) passed peacefully on Nov 21, with no major sectarian incident taking place.

The tight measures adopted by the administration helped though they caused a lot of public inconvenience. There was a price to be paid for security such as switching off mobile and internet services till late in the night, and combing the entire route of the main procession and erecting barriers. All this was accepted as unavoidable because sane-minded citizens, whether Shia, Sunni or non-Muslim, do not want to see more violence.

But this has not changed the overall picture of sectarian violence in Pakistan which continues to be gloomy. How can one be hopeful when steps are not being taken to eliminate violence by addressing its root causes? The masterminds who plot sectarian attacks and guide the killers are allowed to roam freely to plan their next nefarious move. It is the man pulling the trigger who is captured or killed, that is if he hasn’t self-destructed in his quest for paradise.

A security researcher gave me horrific figures for sectarian attacks and the number of casualties resulting from them, though he said that it was difficult for him to give accurate data for the number of Shias killed. In a society in which all sects are quite integrated in most neighourhoods with a few exceptions, a bomb attack on a place of worship or a procession kills indiscriminately.

According to the security consultant I spoke to, 995 attacks, that can be termed sectarian, occurred in 2007-16. A total of 2,909 people were killed and 4,888 injured. This also included some attacks on Sunni scholars by a Shia group calling itself Sipah-i-Mohammad.

The key question to be asked is why are the masterminds and the handlers not being taken to task? Individually, the foot soldiers cannot run the war. They need funds and strategic planning and coordination which only high-level leadership can provide.

We know well that the sectarian terrorist outfits did not drop out of the sky. We also know how the security establishment had created them as strategic assets. Gen Hamid Gul may be dead but we remember his boasts about his role in the creation and training of the Taliban. The mujahideen in Afghanistan mutated into various lashkars some of which were tasked with fighting Pakistan’s war in India-held Kashmir. They may not have been sectarian in their design originally, but did Dr Frankenstein’s monster not free himself from his creator’s grip to wreak havoc on his creator’s loved ones?

The sectarian dimension came in largely by virtue of the Saudi role in funding madressahs that allowed the masterminds to equip the rank and file with guns. Messages are now being circulated that members of the Shia community should have armed guards to protect their majlises. This is inadvisable as it will destabilise the situation further. CAW’s mission should become the mission of all vulnerable groups, while the support and understanding of enlightened and tolerant majority is a source of strength for this particular community.

The need is for the powers-that-be to refrain from patronising the masterminds and not use them as so-called strategic assets. Our defence and foreign policies should be handled by the right quarters. The tail should not wag the dog.

www.zubeidamustafa.com
Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2016

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

Karachi has been abundantly endowed with one of nature’s riches — wind. Located on the Arabian Sea coast, the city cannot complain of being stifled by desultory stillness. Before the city’s horizon changed drastically with the emergence of high-rise buildings, Karachiites had always enjoyed the luxury of cool breezes during summer evenings. The breeze is still there, but has been trapped by concrete and steel structures. Now the breeze has been left only in poetic idiom to give us solace. Faiz Ahmed Faiz captured its beauty in this line, “Jaise seheraon mein haule se chale baad-i-naseem…” (Like the morning breeze in the desert)

Zubeida Mustafa

What I saw was fascinating. With 215 turbines dotting the land in their stately elegance, Whitelee generates 539MW of electricity that is equal to what is needed to light and heat 300,000 homes. The capital investment amounted to £500 million.

Why not tap the potential of a renewable source of power?

Whitelee is the largest wind farm of the 200 currently operational in the UK. This is what is called ‘green and clean and renewable energy’. It has proved to be so feasible that 450 new wind farms are at various stages of construction in Britain. Whitelee was opened to the public in 2009, two years after work started on it. It was extended in 2013.

After visiting Whitelee, I have been wondering why we have not given serious thought to wind as a source of electricity. It needs capital, land and wind. We have the last two in abundance, and in terms of capital cost wind power is cheaper than the hydropower and nuclear energy we hanker after. Wind power is also cheaper to generate than the thermal power we produce by importing oil. Most importantly, wind power is renewable and less messy.

Whitelee is spread over 57 square kilometres, whereas in Pakistan the meteorological department has identified a wind corridor in Sindh covering an area of about 9,700 square kilometres with gross wind power potential of 43,000MW. According to the MIT’s Technology Review, various constraints notwithstanding, at least 11,000MW of electricity can be generated in Sindh.

Is Pakistan using wind power optimally? It is said to be using 150MW or so from two farms in Gharo and Jhimpir. We are told this amounts to 0.5pc of our energy mix. How does this stand? Currently, we generate about 22,000MW of electricity, with thermal power being 65pc, hydropower 31pc, nuclear 3pc, and the remainder from solar and wind sources.

The government realises that thermal power is a constant drain on our resources. But the two alternatives the government seeks are politically and ecologically explosive, and so not a wise choice.

One is our relentless quest for hydropower by building big dams across our erratic and water-starved rivers. The bigger the dams the greater is their appeal for our rulers, even though big dams are now out of favour worldwide. They are costly to build and require a pretty long gestation period. They invariably upset the ecology of rivers and lead to bitter feuds with lower riparians. Then there is the massive human misery caused by the displacement of thousands of families. Take the case of the infamous Kalabagh dam. Just to mention it is enough to lead to vitriolic outpourings.

The other source of energy that is the darling of our establishment is the nuclear power plant. Even before we became the much-vaunted, though ill-advised, nuclear power, we have had to face trouble from our patrons without whose aid the country cannot survive. Now that we are a self-proclaimed nuclear power we have placed our credibility at risk by declaring for decades that Kahuta was for peaceful purposes only.

There were reports that Pakistan could generate some 1,300MW of electricity from a nuclear plant in Karachi and four at Chashma. Karachi will be the site for yet another nuclear plant being set up with China’s help. Its potential hazards for this city of 20 million should not be ignored. Unsurprisingly, the controversial Kanupp-2 has drawn much fire from citizens.

We are defying world trends as stated in the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2016. In the post Chernobyl and Fukushima age, the trend has been towards reducing dependence on nuclear energy, early closure of nuclear plants, fewer opening of new plants and more investment in renewable energy. China is the sole exception.

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Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2016

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

According to Unesco’s Global Education Monitoring Report [GEMR] 2016 released recently, only two-thirds of children worldwide would have completed primary schooling by 2030, the deadline set by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Zubeida Mustafa

What is the prognosis for Pakistan? The goal of universal primary education in South Asia will be achieved in 2051, says the GEMR. Actually, it might be much later for Pakistan because most of our neighbours in the region are developing faster than us education-wise and their population growth is also slower.

There are many reasons why Pakistan has failed to achieve its education targets. Here it should be pointed out that generally our policymakers focus excessively on quantitative goals and ignore qualitative achievements. An equitable and inclusive approach is also missing. Aser, an annual report on education, has proved year after year how our education system, especially in the public sector, is failing to teach children the basic skills of literacy, numeracy and critical thinking. Simply having children enrolled in schools is not enough.

Parents want to educate their children, but in schools that function.

Of course, the ideal approach would be to combine quantitative with qualitative targets. This calls for a serious analysis of why we are failing. Policymakers still stick to conventional beliefs that help to shift the blame to others. For instance, one widespread myth is that ‘ignorant parents’ still have to be told about the advantages of education and be persuaded to send their children to school. New institutions will be underutilised, our rulers want us to believe.

The fact is that most parents (even those who are illiterate or uneducated themselves) now want to send their children to school — but schools that function. Many applicants have to be turned down because they cannot be accommodated for lack of capacity.

Take the case of The Garage School (TGS) that Shabina set up in 1999 in Karachi and that has been expanding incrementally. The school started with 14 children in Shabina’s garage. She wanted to educate underprivileged children to commemorate her late husband, a PAF officer killed in the 1971 war. Over the years, TGS has attracted children from Neelum Colony and now its three branches, one with an afternoon shift, provide holistic education to 486 girls and boys. The elementary section that opened last month has 80 children on its rolls.

More significant than the children who have been admitted (187) is the number of those who had to be turned away — 215 of them this year. Even the elementary section which has younger children (the youngest is 4.5 years) had to turn down applicants for lack of space, prompting Shabina to say, “My heart went out to the dreary faces of those who couldn’t get in.”

The elementary section is relevant to the GEMR in another way. By drawing in children younger in age, institutions can ensure that the retention rate will go up and thus the number of out-of-school primary age children (5.6 million in Pakistan) will drop.

The 2009 education policy, still in place, introduced the concept of pre-primary classes. However, the number of public-sector institutions equipped to accommodate toddlers in their nursery/kindergarten classes is not enough.

Elementary education is now universally recognised. In our social conditions exposing a child to the school environment as early as possible should be an advantage. Shabina feels that at the pre-primary age children are impressionable and can be easily “groomed and taught discipline” to be brought at a par with the best of students in the country. Thus she hopes to make them “the stars” which all children have the potential of becoming.

An important feature of the TGS is that it is a family-oriented institution. It not only provides education to the children, it also manages their health and lifestyle. The GEMR links health with the child’s capacity to learn. The TGS has proved that it is possible to keep students healthy. All children are given a medical check-up at the time of admission and health problems are addressed by good-hearted paediatricians who help the school. Children receive multivitamins and healthy snacks daily during the mid-morning break.

The preschool classes should help immensely if education is tailored to the children’s mental capacities and is a fun and creative activity conducted through art, music and games without burdening children with excessive work that kills their initiative and robs them of their interest in school work. Preschoolers should have a head start over older fellow students who begin school later.

www.zubeidamustafa.com

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

Qandeel Baloch’s horrific murder in the name of ‘honour’ is testimony to the failure of the women’s movement to overturn patriarchy in Pakistan. Against the backdrop of the spate of anti-women violence, comes a report by Dr Rubina Saigol written for the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, a German foundation. Titled Feminism and the Women’s Movement in Pakistan: Actors, Debates and Strategies, this excellent document should provide much food for thought.

The author, an eminent sociologist, touches the heart of the issue — especially in cases like Qandeel’s — when she points out that there are “silences” (neglected subjects) that surround questions of family and sexuality, the mainstay of patriarchy and women’s subjugation. These have generally not been addressed by the women’s movement and she recommends that they should be.

But that is not all. More than these silences, the author points out, feminists have failed to devise a successful strategy to empower women and create public spaces for them. That accounts for their inability to make a profound impact.

Feminists here never tried to be inclusive.

Dr Saigol observes that today there is “a deafening disquieting quiet in the women’s movement”. She quotes a number of well-known feminists who contend that Pakistan lacks an autonomous vigorous movement, notwithstanding the vocal female protests against the oppression of women.

She substantiates her argument by pointing to the absence of a “common collective vision of a better world, agreed upon strategies to create such a world, and shared understandings of the world in which we live and work”.

One would agree with the writer who traces the history of the women’s struggle in Pakistan to show how it evolved in response to internal politics and external events along with the globalisation that began in the post-cold war age.

But to formulate a unified stance has not been possible given the many serious constraints that exist, many of which are deeply rooted in our socio-cultural values, such as a general trend towards glorification of patriarchy that is reinforced by religion, the adversarial relationship between feminists and the state, and the depoliticisation of the women’s struggle. The impression conveyed is that the feminist movement has been a victim of circumstances — be they the induction of donor-driven NGOs or extremist religious ideologues in the country.

However, the women’s ‘movement’ in Pakistan has always been bifurcated by great schisms. At no stage was a common platform created where women of all views could gather on a minimal common agenda. The fact is that feminists of all shades never tried to be inclusive. Hence no group had the numerical strength to assert a claim to supremacy. WAF had the greatest potential for leadership due to its financial and political autonomy. Yet it never brought in its fold non-professional disadvantaged women who constitute the bulk of Pakistan’s female population. It focused on them only in nuanced consciousness-raising and, to its credit, condemned strongly individual cases of abuse of underprivileged women.

This activism didn’t go very far although it pushed the women’s issue on the national agenda. Some laws were changed but never implemented. The lives of the majority of women didn’t change. Though they support large families, as Qandeel did, they have to bow before patriarchy. They have no time to be mobilised to learn about their rights which they know would never be actualised.

However, the same women are willing to respond to a call which offers them services that to an extent facilitate them in fulfilling some of their basic needs. That is why various development NGOs working in the education and (reproductive) health sectors — even the donor-funded but honest ones — have been able to achieve more than the feminists in creating awareness of women’s rights.

Many of them have taken the indirect, but more effective, route to empower women and instil in them a vision of a better future. They understand the importance of female participation to create awareness in them. The next generation of women definitely show the promise of being more skilful in negotiating their way through rough patriarchal waters.

Had the advocacy groups tried to link up with the services groups they would have reinforced each others’ work. I remember the iconic development worker, Perween Rahman, lamenting the inability of the women’s movement to mobilise huge numbers to protest against injustices inflicted on women. She recognised the fact that women’s development was possible only if their rights were given full recognition. “But we are so busy attending to the basic needs of men and women that we have no time and resources to do advocacy. If the women’s rights movement were to join hands with us, we would definitely support them as that is what we also want.”

What needs to be recognised is that human development is an integrated and holistic process. To be effective, rights activists must address all areas and classes of human development simultaneously.

www.zubeidamustafa.com

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

Pakistan’s economy is in grave trouble. According to the Pakistan Economic Survey 2015-16, it failed to meet the growth target of 5.5pc in FY2016. GDP grew by 4.7 pc. This was mainly due to the ‘major setback’ (to use the finance minister’s words) in agriculture.

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Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been challenged all over the world as some giant seed multinationals have grown phenomenally thanks to their aggressive marketing. If unchecked, they could dominate global agriculture. GM seeds will undermine biodiversity as the manufacturers ensure their monopoly in the seed sector. Being vulnerable to pest attacks, GM crops need pesticides in large quantities that poor farmers cannot afford. It is no coincidence that the manufacturers of these seeds also produce pesticides which account for a big chunk of their revenues.

Farmers are predicting another year of difficulties

Some facts are indisputable. Cotton production has not increased as promised since BT cotton was introduced. The decline is not fully reflected in the data released by the government because it has changed the measure used to determine the output, which is counted in the number of bales. Previously, each cotton bale weighed 176 kilogrammes. Since 2011 it has been reduced to 150kg. Using the old measure we know that cotton production had hit a record figure of 14.6 million bales in 2004. That figure has never been reached again and last year it was less than 9m bales (by the old measure).

The per hectare yield as well as the area of cotton cultivation have been erratic. In FY2012, 2.8m hectares (about seven acres) were cultivated and the yield was 815kg per hectare. In FY2016, these figures were 2.91 hectares with a yield of 587kg per hectare respectively, which means the slight increase in acreage was offset by the lower yield.

The government blames the weather (frequent and excessive rains) and pest attack, mainly bollworms, for the fall in cotton output. In a recent notification, the Punjab government advised farmers to delay planting.

The farmers have another story to tell. They say it is the poor quality of seeds that has led to pest attacks and caused the decline in production. They are predicting another year of crisis. According to one media report this year, many farmers have switched to other crops and the area of cotton cultivation is considerably lower.

In spite of poor results, the government insists on approving GM cotton seeds. Thus in a meeting in February, the National Biosafety Committee (NBC) hastily approved the applications for nearly 100 GM seeds without following prescribed procedures. That is how Monsanto and Dupont were allowed commercialisation of GM corn without large-scale testing and biosafety risk assessment in open fields in Pakistan.

This was reconfirmed by the NBC in another meeting in April on the written orders of the prime minister. This is shocking to say the least. There has been a concerted effort to increase the private sector’s role and space in the seed market. Monsanto, an American biotechnology company, has been a big beneficiary of the changes in the government’s policies. In 2015, the Seeds Act 1976 was changed to “meet the requirements of the modern seed industry”.

Not surprisingly the pressure for change came from the US which wants Pakistan to meet its ‘obligations’ under WTO regulations and create a larger market for private seed producers. Previously, seed manufacturing and its price regulation was in the public sector. Now the private sector — mainly giant biotech companies — has entered the seed market in Pakistan.

WikiLeaks which brought into the open routine exchanges between US diplomatic missions in Pakistan and the State Department in Washington apparently revealed how Monsanto was in the picture in the formulation of cotton policies in the country.

To reject new technologies in a knee-jerk reaction is unwise. But it is worse to accept them indiscriminately without testing them rigorously under local conditions.

The Kissan Board has gone to court to get justice for the farmers. It filed a petition in 2014 challenging the NBC meeting that allowed the commercialisation of BT cotton that year. Its plea was accepted but the government went into appeal and the matter was put on hold. The government has proceeded as usual. Now another case has been filed challenging the government on constitutional grounds and for violation of the Cartagena Protocol. BT’s fate now hinges on the court’s decision.

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This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

The Pakistan Economic Survey 2015-16 reminds us of our ticking population bomb.

We are told that today the country`s population stands at 195.4 million 3.7m more than it was the previous year. We have regressed.

The population growth rate stands at 1.89pc in 2016. It dropped to 1.49pc in 1960-2003.

Yet few express serious concern about the threat we face from our rapidly growing numbers that are undermining our national economy and destroying our social structures.

Many myths have been propagated to camouflage the official apathy vis-à-vis the population sector. Thus, it is said that there is population resistance to family planning on religious grounds. Another myth goes that people are ignorant of birth control and prefer large families.

These myths have been exploded by the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey of 2007 and 2014 which established that only a handful of women cited religion as a factor in their failure to limit pregnancies.

As for ignorance, practically all women questioned knew of at least one or more contraceptive methods. It cannot be disputed that irrespective of the views expressed from the pulpit women are now ready to plan their families. According to the two demographic surveys, there is also a substantial unmet need. That means there is a big chunk of the reproductive age female population 40 pc according to some estimates who want to limit their family size but cannot.

Then why are we failing in this sector? Of course, there is the usual absence of political will, ineptitude and corruption that marks the government`s working in the social sectors.

Policies are there but implementation is not.

The number and performance of population welfare centres that were set up to provide access to contraceptive services leave much to be desired. Media reports indicate that they are either non-existent or non-functional in many remote areas. Poor performance of official service institutions impacts mainly on the underprivileged, the worst sufferers. This is visible in the large family size of the poor.

There is a lot of focus on awareness-raising and research when the key issue to be addressedis thatofeasy access tocontraceptive services for potential acceptors. It is a pity that many who do not want more children cannot avert births because family planning services are beyond their reach.

There is also the need to integrate the population sector with the health system. This was suggested many years ago by Dr Nafis Sadik, the first executive director of the UN Population Fund, to the Pakistan government. But for reasons not known, Islamabad could never understand why a holistic approach was needed for a successful familyplanning programme.

Another aspect that has been ignored is the need to focus intensely on the status of women.

It seems that the progress made by the feminist activists in the 1980s and 1990s in empowering women has been pushed back. With daughters held in low esteem, family planning has suffered a setback. Parental preference for a male child remains pronounced.

Itappears thatithasbeenlefttoahandful of NGOs to sustain Pakistan`s population programme. The biggest of them is RahnumaFPAP, the oldest organisation in the field.

Having been launched in 1953 when Pakistan did not even have an official population programme, it has an impressive delivery network of 10 family health hospitals, 10 mobile service units and thousands of clinics. It has created referral mechanisms with a number of government and private clinics and practitioners and thus claims to cover an area of 77,910 square kilometres and a population of 12.5m.

Rahnuma`s dynamic and committed president, Mahtab Akbar Rashdi, tells me that her organisation has made all its programmesholistic and integrated. She herself is a staunch advocate of family planning and agrees that low esteem for women is a deterrent to progress in this sector.

HANDS is another large NGO that was launchedin 1979 with the mission of improving health and education, with a focus on mother and child and reproductive health. It claims an outreach of 25m people in 42,000 villages. Its Marvi model involving community-based health workers visiting women in their homes was conceptualised in 2007. HANDS claims that it is making an impact.

But can NGOs with their limited resources and capacity achieve what is essentially the government`s responsibility? Mahtab Rashdi complains that `visible political commitment from the provincial governments is yet to be seen`. She specifically identifies Punjab, Pakistan`s most populous province, where the government`s family planning programme `reaches only 17pc of people in the reproductive age`.

This leaves one wondering if family planning also has a political dimension as the census that has been blocked since 2008. After all, doesn`t a big population translate into a big constituency? That is a political bonus in a country where ethnicity determines electoral results.

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This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

The paradox of education in Pakistan is that the children of the poor are not getting enough of it, while the offspring of the rich get a surfeit. Neither is good for the child.

The privileged class faces a dilemma due to the commercialisation of the education system. Mothers with young children complain about the burden of classwork and tuitions. What they worry about is the overload of studies that overflows from school hours to tuition time.

In this context, it is but natural that some enterprising mothers are looking for solutions. A novel one that is becoming increasingly popular is homeschooling. There are a few mothers in Lahore and a growing number in Karachi who have opted to withdraw their young children from school or have not sent them to school at all.

All of them are dissatisfied with our current school system the highly elitist and the not so elitist. The most commonly heard complaint is that our schools rob the child of their childhood. Under the present system, the child is denied the joy of learning. The schools are suppressing critical thinking and destroying creativity, they say.

One angry mother pulled her children out of school when her daughter was appointed the monitor and asked to report those children who spoke Urdu in school. She found this distasteful.

Homeschooling one mother prefers to call it home education is thus the public`s response to the authorities` failure to address theissue ofpedagogyandthecontentofeducation adequately. The Karachi homeschoolers are loosely organised into two groups one in the DHA area and the other in Gulshan-i-Iqbal. The idea of getting together is not so much to regulate their working rigidly as to learn from one another`s experience and make a collective contribution to their children`s learning process.

Visiting the group in DHA gave me the opportunity to watch the children at work.

They seemed to be playing and having fun.

Actually, they were learning. It was Wednesday, when mothers meet at the weekly Book Club to draw up their work plans. There were nearly 20 children and eight or so mothers.

When I joined them, one of the mothers was teaching the children from ages four to ten something about plants. When the class ended the students trooped out into the garden for some real-life experience. As an introductory exercise, they had already visited a farm and studied the different species of trees there.

Since the mothers were highly educated themselves they appeared to be coping well.

Normally, a mother might be homeschooling her own children and also those from anotherfamily. There is plenty of interaction among them and the atmosphere was relaxed. The groups are of mixed ages with the older ones helpingtheiryoungersiblings.

Forever in quest of solutions, many mothers had arranged for tutors for older children to teach subjects at a higher level such as science and mathematics. Ultimately, they aim to prepare children to sit for their `O`-levels examinations privately.

It appeared to be an experiment that held promise but many issues come to mind about which the mothers themselves are sceptical.

They say that the experiment is so new in Pakistan that they donothave ayardstick to measure its effectiveness. Unlike the US where homeschooling operates in a strictly regulated environment, home schools in Pakistan have no constraints. In the US and other Western countries, mechanisms have been created to test the children`s progress periodically.

The mothers acknowledge that they had tomuster courage not to conform; even now they feel they have to ultimately aim at fitting their child into the conventional world of higher education andprofessional life. One said she may ultimately move bacl< to the US from where she returned to serve her country. She was candid enough to tell me that after a year of homeschooling her younger son still misses the regular school he had been attending earlier. But the older one who has learning problems says he would never want to go back to school. What perturbed me was the limited social exposure of homeschooled children to diversity in society. One mother, who is teaching her children at home, told me that homeschooling mothers have to be `quirky` by their very nature. They have to have strong ideas about education and should be prepared to take risks. That is why they tend to come from the same socio-economic class with similar ideological beliefs. Having studied in a convent school where a diversity of class, faiths and culture enriched the classroom environment, I wonder how children growing up in a secluded group with an identical outlook learn to coexist with the `other`. It is time to seriously rethink education. Wouldn`t it be advisable for parents to concentrate their efforts on reforms in the school sector? www.zubeidamustafa.com

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan