CAPITALI$M IN SPACE

Suing your way to the stars

Lucas Matney@lucasmtny 

August 22, 2021

Image Credits: Matthew Staver/Bloomberg / Getty Images


Hello friends, and welcome back to Week in Review!

I’m back from a very fun and rehabilitative couple weeks away from my phone, my Twitter account and the news cycle. That said, I actually really missed writing this newsletter, and while Greg did a fantastic job while I was out, I won’t be handing over the reins again anytime soon. Plenty happened this week and I struggled to zero in on a single topic to address, but I finally chose to focus on Bezos’s Blue Origin suing NASA.

If you’re reading this on the TechCrunch site, you can get this in your inbox from the newsletter page, and follow my tweets @lucasmtny.


The big thing

I was going to write about OnlyFans for the newsletter this week and their fairly shocking move to ban sexually explicit content from their site in a bid to stay friendly with payment processors, but alas I couldn’t help myself and wrote an article for ole TechCrunch dot com instead. Here’s a link if you’re curious.

Now, I should also note that while I was on vacation I missed all of the conversation surrounding Apple’s incredibly controversial child sexual abuse material detection software that really seems to compromise the perceived integrity of personal devices. I’m not alone in finding this to be a pretty worrisome development despite Apple’s intention of staving off a worse alternative. Hopefully, one of these weeks I’ll have the time to talk with some of the folks in the decentralized computing space about how our monolithic reliance on a couple tech companies operating with precious little consumer input is very bad. In the meantime, I will point you to some reporting from TechCrunch’s own Zack Whittaker on the topic which you should peruse because I’m sure it will be a topic I revisit here in the future.

Now then! Onto the topic at hand.

Federal government agencies don’t generally inspire much adoration. While great things have been accomplished at the behest of ample federal funding and the tireless work of civil servants, most agencies are treated as bureaucratic bloat and aren’t generally seen as anything worth passionately defending. Among the public and technologists in particular, NASA occupies a bit more of a sacred space. The American space agency has generally been a source of bipartisan enthusiasm, as has its goal to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2024.

Which brings us to some news this week. While so much digital ink was spilled on Jeff Bezos’s little jaunt to the edge of space, cowboy hat, champagne and all, there’s been less fanfare around his space startup’s lawsuit against NASA, which we’ve now learned will delay the development of a new lunar lander by months, potentially throwing NASA’s goal to return astronauts to the moon’s surface on schedule into doubt.

Bezos’s upstart Blue Origin is protesting the fact that they were not awarded a government contract while Elon Musk’s SpaceX earned a $2.89 billion contract to build a lunar lander. This contract wasn’t just recently awarded either, SpaceX won it back in April and Blue Origin had already filed a complaint with the Government Accountability Office. This happened before Bezos penned an open letter promising a $2 billion discount for NASA which had seen budget cuts at the hands of Congress dash its hoped to award multiple contracts. None of these maneuverings proved convincing enough for the folks at NASA, pushing Bezos’s space startup to sue the agency.

This little feud has caused long-minded Twitter users to dig up this little gem from a Bezos 2019 speech — as transcribed by Gizmodo — highlighting Bezos’s own distaste for how bureaucracy and greed have hampered NASA’s ability to reach for the stars:

“To the degree that big NASA programs become seen as jobs programs and that they have to be distributed to the right states where the right Senators live, and so on. That is going to change the objective. Now your objective is not to, you know, whatever it is, to get a man to the moon or a woman to the moon, but instead to get a woman to the moon while preserving X number of jobs in my district. That is a complexifier, and not a healthy one…[…]

Today, there would be, you know, three protests, and the losers would sue the federal government because they didn’t win. It’s interesting, but the thing that slows things down is procurement. It’s become the bigger bottleneck than the technology, which I know for a fact for all the well meaning people at NASA is frustrating.

A Blue Origin spokesperson called the suit, an “attempt to remedy the flaws in the acquisition process found in NASA’s Human Landing System.” But the lawsuit really seems to highlight how dire this deal is to the ability of Blue Origin to lock down top talent. Whether the startup can handle the reputational risk of suing NASA and delaying America’s return to the moon seems to be a question very much worth asking.

BLUE ORIGIN IS BLEEDING MORE OF ITS TOP WORKERS TO ITS RIVALS

17 PEOPLE HAVE LEFT THE COMPANY OVER THE SUMMER ALONE.

BLUE ORIGIN IS BLEEDING MORE OF ITS TOP WORKERS TO ITS RIVALS

17 PEOPLE HAVE LEFT THE COMPANY OVER THE SUMMER ALONE.

DANIEL OBERHAUS VIA FLICKR / FUTURISM

Summer Losses

The hits just keep on coming for Blue Origin.

So far this year, Jeff Bezo’s company lost out on a $2.9 billion contract to SpaceX and it was beaten by Virgin Galactic for the honor of sending the first billionaire CEO to space. Now a new report from CNBC reveals that Blue Origin has lost roughly 17 top employees this summer alone.  

Many of Blue Origin’s former employees left for seemingly greener pastures such as Nitin Arora, the lead engineer on the company’s ill-fated lunar lander program, who is now joining rival SpaceX.

There’s also aerospace engineer Lauren Lyons who joined Firefly Aerospace as its chief operating officer.

CNBC reports that 15 others ranging from engineers, to senior executives, to administrators, to project managers have all left the company over the summer.

Talent Bribe

Despite this, Blue Origin presents a rosier outlook of its situation.

“Blue Origin grew by 850 people in 2020 and we have grown by another 650 so far in 2021,” a spokesperson for the company told CNBC. “In fact, we’ve grown by nearly a factor of four over the past three years. We continue to fill out major leadership roles in manufacturing, quality, engine design, and vehicle design. It’s a team we’re building and we have great talent.”

After Bezo’s flight to space this summer, Blue Origin rewarded all of its employees with a hefty $10,000 bonus. However, several anonymous employees told CNBC that the bonus was widely looked at as a way to retain employees in response to the amount that were leaving. 

Frustrated Workforce

There’s probably not just any one reason why folks are leaving Blue Origin in droves. However, there do seem to be a few main factors at play.

For one, many employees seem downright embarrassed of their company’s highly public spats with the likes of NASA, SpaceX, and Virgin Galactic, according to Ars Technica. These moves are also likely going to result in Blue Origin losing out on more work in the future. 

“They will never get a real government contract after this,” an anonymous NASA source told Ars.

Also, if Blue Origin’s Glassdoor reviews are to be believed, current and former employees don’t have the most positive things to say about the stifling work culture and lack of job growth (nor do they care for CEO Bob Smith). 

In either case, it’s always a bad look when your employees quit your company in droves. But it’s an even worse look when they go straight to your biggest competitors when they do quit. 

READ MORE: Top talent departs Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin as NASA lander fight escalates [CNBC]

More on Blue Origin blues: Blue Origin Lead Lunar Lander Engineer Jumps Ship, Joins SpaceX

Top Talent From Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin Depart Company as Fight With NASA Escalates

Dozens of key leaders reportedly left after Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight in July.


As the race to space continues, it was revealed that Jeff Bezos‘ Blue Origin has seen more than a dozen of its key leaders and engineers leave the company almost immediately after Bezos launched himself into space.

Many of the engineers who left were reportedly part of Blue Origin’s astronaut lunar lander program and moved on in the weeks following Bezos’ trip. Shortly after his spaceflight, the company gave all its full-time employees $10,000 USD no strings attached cash bonus. CNBC learned that two of its top engineers left to go to Blue Origin’s competitors, Elon Musk‘s SpaceX and Firefly Aerospace. Sources revealed that many thought the bonus was meant to try to entice the talent to stay in response to a number of employees filing notices to leave the company after the July flight.

Many of the unannounced departures cited frustrations with top management and a heavily bureaucratic structure, though the company emphasized that Blue Origin continues to grow its team. Since Bezos hired Bob Smith as CEO of the company in 2017, Blue Origin has failed to meet several deliverables. It remains to be seen if the upcoming projects will remain on track or be delayed even further.

Blue Origin's Top Engineers and Employees Resigned After Jeff Bezos' Trip to Space

Sophie Webster, Tech Times 22 August 2021, 

(Photo : GettlyImages/ SOPA Images ) Jeff Bezos Blue Origin


Blue Origin has lost 17 key senior engineers and leaders since Jeff Bezos flew to space last month. He has lost top talent since he came back to Earth.

Many of the engineers resigned just weeks after the billionaire's spaceflight. Others have updated their LinkedIn pages over the past weeks.

Blue Origin Engineers Resigned

According to CNBC, the departures include New Shepard senior vice president Steve Bennet, national security sales director Scott Jacobs, chief of mission assurance Jess Ashby, New Glenn senior director Bob Ess, New Gless senior finance manager Bill Scammell and New Glenn first stage senior director Tod Byguist.

It also included senior manager of production testing Christopher Payne, senior propulsion design engineer Dave Sanderson, New Shepard technical project manager Nate Chapman, senior HLS human factors engineer Rachel Forman, and New Shepard lead avionics software engineer Huong Vo.

Also Read: Jeff Bezos, Crewmates Received 14-Hour Training for Blue Origin Spaceflight

The rest of the engineers who resigned are BE-4 controller lead integration and testing engineer Jack Nelson, BE-7 avionics hardware engineer Aaron Wang, rocket engine development engineer Gerry Hudak, and propulsion engineer Rex Gu.

Most of the Blue Origin engineers transferred to SpaceX.

The engineers and leaders who announced that they were leaving the company did not specify the reason why, but frustration with executive management and a slow bureaucratic structure is usually cited in employee reviews on sites like Glassdoor.

A spokesperson for Blue Origin stated that the company still grew despite the sudden resignation of their top employees. In 2020, the company grew by 850, and they have grown by 650 more in 2021.

The spokesperson added that the company has grown by almost a factor of four over the past three years. Blue Origin plans to immediately fill out the leadership roles in quality, manufacturing, vehicle design, and engine design. The company is currently building a new team.

Some of the top engineers who left the company were part of the lunar lander program. The space firm lost its bid for a NASA development contract in April when its competitor, SpaceX, was announced as the awardee under NASA's Human Landing System program, winning a contract with $2.9 billion.

However, despite the Government Accountability Office denying the space firm's protest of NASA's decision, the firm has continued to escalate the issue, according to Fox Business.

The space firm launched a public relations offensive against SpaceX. Blue Origin also sued NADA in federal court over the contract.
A $10,000 Cash Bonus

The space firm has almost 4,000 employees around the United States. Its headquarters is located in Kent, Washington, but it also has facilities in Van Horn, Texas, Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Huntsville, Alabama.

Ten days after Jeff Bezos flew to space, the space firm reportedly gave all of its full-time employees a $10,000 cash bonus. None of the contractors received the bonus, according to NBC News.

The company also confirmed that the bonus was a way for them to say "thank you" to the employees because they were able to achieve the milestone of launching people to space.

The bonus was also perceived as the company's way of attempting to entice their talents to stay in response to the number of employees filing notices to leave the firm after Bezos' space flight.

Related Article: Elon Musk Agrees that Blue Origin Should Spend More Time on Rocket Science Instead of Protesting NASA's HLS Decisions | Alleged $900 Million Spent on Lobbying

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Sophie Webster

PAKISTAN

HEALING THE PHYSICIANS
Why young doctors feel they are expendable in the fight against Covid-19

LONG READ FEATURE ARTICLE

Haniya Javed

Updated a day ago

As the battle against Covid-19 rages on, young doctors continue to fight on the frontlines, often without basic protection and even timely payment of their salaries. Disillusioned, many feel that they are expendable and want to leave the country. But this is only the latest aspect of the many issues doctors have to face all across Pakistan

On April 14, 2021, like many Muslims across Pakistan, 26-year-old Dr Qadir Nawaz Jakhrani woke up an hour before dawn. He had sehri and then recited the Quran and said his fajr prayers.

After the namaz, he went to his bedroom and asked his wife to go to another room as he wanted to rest alone. “It’s the first of Ramazan,” he said. “I won’t be going on duty to the hospital.”A couple of hours later, when Jakhrani didn’t come out of the room, the family got worried and banged on the door. It was locked and they couldn’t hear anything inside. The family then broke the door down, unprepared for what was on the other side. Jakhrani had hanged himself from the ceiling fan.

Upon reaching the house around nine in the morning, colleagues from Jakhrani’s hospital, Taluqa Headquarter Hospital, Kashmore, found his wife, three children, father and brother in a state of utter devastation given what they had just witnessed.

In the hospital where he worked, nine medical officers were hired in total, but only four would come to duty. The other five got away by paying larger kharchis (bribes).

Just two days earlier, as Jakhrani was about to leave the hospital for home, he had hugged a colleague while humming the tune of ‘lag ja galay ke phir ye haseen raat ho na ho [embrace me for we don’t know if we’ll get the chance again].’ The next day, his co-workers noticed that he was spending a lot of time on his phone, reciting Quranic verses and posting them on Facebook.

“God knows what was going on in his mind all this time,” says one of his colleagues, who insists on remaining unidentified fearing action against him at the workplace. “It sometimes makes me angry that I didn’t understand the meaning of all this when it was happening.”

But all this has been happening to young doctors across Pakistan. After Jakhrani’s death, his family said that he was under a lot of pressure because of financial hardships — a reality young doctors, especially ones working in the public sector in Pakistan, are all too familiar with.

Jakhrani was among 1,100 doctors and 1,350 nurses hired by the Sindh government on 89-day contract arrangements to respond to the rising Covid-19 emergency. (2,300 nurses were hired originally, but later 950 were made permanent).

In the hospital where he worked, nine medical officers were hired in total, but only four would come to duty. The other five got away by paying larger kharchis (bribes) to the district health office. Colleagues and close friends of Jakhrani share that while kharchis are a norm in government offices, the district health office would demand five to 10 percent of the sum to release their salaries. Those who didn’t come on duty would give up to 40 percent, they share.

But having to share kharchis is still far from the biggest concern of the doctors putting their lives at risk during the pandemic.

In the days leading up to Jakhrani’s death, the staff had not been paid since December 2020. A sole breadwinner in the family, who had an older wheelchair-bound brother suffering from lymphoma, Jakhrani didn’t even have 500 rupees to pay to get his salary released. Helpless, he requested his colleagues to pitch in for him.

Jakhrani would regularly follow up with his co-workers about his pay. His manner kind yet desperate in voice notes, he would urge his friends to take care of their health during the pandemic.

Weeks later, a friend gathered 6,000 rupees while Jakhrani’s father borrowed 15,000 from a local grocer on a promise that the money would be returned very soon as Jakhrani’s pay would be cleared in the same week. A few days later, when the salary cheques were issued, Jakhrani was no longer around to receive them.

THE PERSONAL COST OF SAVING LIVES

Photo by Fahim Siddiqi/White Star

Jakhrani’s suicide had doctors from Taluqa Headquarter Hospital boycotting their duties, and protests spread to other hospitals in the province. An enquiry committee, set up to investigate the matter, suspended the presiding assistant district health officer, Kashmore, Dr Ahsan Ahmed Dahani. After the episode, while the situation of salary clearance improved for a couple of months, doctors across rural Sindh share they haven’t been paid since May.

“The salary comes every third or fourth month, when the 89 days are completed,” says Rabail Abro, a nurse in Larkana. “They neither make us permanent nor pay us on time. It is embarrassing to keep holding out our hands in front of our friends and relatives for rent and food.”

At present, Abro and other nurses are dealing with people flooding the district health office for Covid-19 vaccine jabs. Close to 500 people are lining up each day, with Abro and team not even getting a moment to take a break and drink water.



Abro would do all this while listening to accusations from grieving family members who were suspicious of the coronavirus and were regularly seeing conspiracy theories on WhatsApp. Still, when local clerics would be called in to perform the last rites, it was healthcare workers such as Abro who would help them get into personal protective equipment (PPE).




In the mornings, Abro attends online classes as part of his training as a Post-Registered Nurse Bachelor of Science in Nursing (Post-RN BscN). And from afternoon to night, he’s a Covid-19 responder in the community.

For Abro, the starting six months were the toughest. He was working non-stop and there was no pay. In May-June 2020, when the country was hit by the first surge of infections and fear enveloped populations, people refused to even stand in close proximity to their loved ones. But social distancing was not a luxury medical workers such as Abro could afford.

“I was everywhere,” he says. “Attending patients in the isolation room, running between intensive care and high dependency units, and then taking the dead bodies to the graveyard for burial.”

Abro would do all this while listening to accusations from grieving family members who were suspicious of the coronavirus and were regularly seeing conspiracy theories on WhatsApp. Still, when local clerics would be called in to perform the last rites, it was healthcare workers such as Abro who would help them get into personal protective equipment (PPE). Then, with the help of men from Edhi Welfare, Abro and his colleagues would go down into the graves to lower the bodies and cover them with dirt.

Things for young doctors and healthcare workers have never been easy in Pakistan, but the virus made things worse. “At times I would wish all that was happening around us could switch off,” Abro says.

RISK ALLOWANCE

Health workers conduct temperature checks at the Rawalpindi Railway Station 

| Mohammad Asim/White Star

Despite working so closely in contact with the infections, Abro claims he has never received a risk allowance, which was promised by the government to healthcare workers in all provinces.

In the past 16 months, since the coronavirus came to Pakistan, doctors across the country have held several protests demanding the promised salaries and risk allowances by the government.

During summer last year, the Sindh government had announced that the allowance would include house job officers, postgraduate professionals, nursing students and staff employed at the government hospitals and health centres across the province. A few months later, the health department issued a notification that, with Covid-19 cases going down in the province, the health risk allowance was to be discontinued. Doctors and paramedical staff responded by suspending out-patient services in government-run hospitals across the province. While the decision was taken back the next day, on ground little changed.

“We know of permanent employees, who are not necessarily on the frontline Covid-19 response, receiving the allowance while we, who are being exposed every day, have not received any allowance,” says Dr Asif Abbasi, who is working in a rural health centre in Shahdadkot.

“At present, all doctors, paramedical staff and the ancillary staff are among the frontliners and deserving of health risk allowance,” says Dr Malik Adil, the casualty medical officer at the Institute of Kidney Diseases (IKD) in Peshawar. “The morale of doctors is down to the extent that I have colleagues who are taking antidepressants to cope and continue responding to the Covid-19 surges,” he says.

In June this year, the speaker in the National Assembly session took up the issue and directed the Ministry of National Health Services (NHS) to address it by noon the next day. As yet, no progress has been reported across all provinces. In the capital alone, healthcare workers boycotted hospitals and took to the streets when the government rejected a summary seeking allowance.

According to a recent newspaper article, the country’s leading auditors reportedly indicated irregularities, wasteful expenditures, loss and misuse of funds, fabricated purchases and negligence of Covid-19 public funds of worth three billion rupees in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Finance and Health Minister KP, Taimur Jhagra, in a series of tweets, refuted the leaked information calling it “confusing, misleading and irresponsible based on an ongoing audit process in the province.”

HIGH EXPOSURE IN THE CITY

Young doctors protest on Jail Road in Lahore | Arif Ali/White Star

While health workers such as Abro are struggling in smaller cities and rural areas, the conditions in bigger cities, with higher infection rates and low morale, are even worse.

Dr Kashif Jakhrani moved to Karachi last year to respond to the city’s Covid-19 crisis. Even though Kashif had high marks, he was not nominated for a position in his hometown Kashmore. After an interview at the Sindh Secretariat, he was offered a position in Karachi, because cases were rising in the city and they needed healthcare workers to step in. “We were told cases were peaking in Karachi, so many of us came from rural Sindh on these hirings,” Kashif says.

At first, Kashif was posted at the Arts Council for vaccination and, most recently, to Expo Centre in intensive care.

Coming from rural Sindh, the reality of living in Karachi was a rude awakening for Kashif. He was not prepared for the city’s high rents, unreliable transport (especially during initial lockdowns) and the hurriedness that comes with city life. The experience was made worse by the irregular salary schedule.

With the salary coming every second month, Kashif says he would have been better off with a daily wage private job in his hometown. “At least I would have sustained better with food provided from home,” he says. “We can’t help but worry that we’ll be laid off as soon as Covid-19 ends. I’m trying to get posted back home, but it’s not happening any time soon.”

The issues doctors such as Kashif face are widespread throughout the country. Doctors across the country are endangering their lives with little protection for themselves.

On any regular day, that often stretches to 48 working hours, Dr Romana Wazir, a Peshawar-based postgraduate student training in obstetrics and gynaecology, is found running between labour rooms, operation theatres, wards, emergency rooms and outpatient services — constantly exposed to the virus.

In the past 16 months, since the coronavirus came to Pakistan, doctors across the country have held several protests demanding the promised salaries and risk allowances by the government.

In August 2020, the first time Wazir got infected with Covid-19, a 28-year-old pregnant woman had left the hospital facility through an out-pass before she could be screened for the virus. The next morning at seven, the patient returned to the hospital with irregular breathing. She was moved to the intensive care unit (ICU) and put on a ventilator. Finally, a C-section was performed on her. While the baby was born premature and survived, the mother couldn’t make it past the third day of giving birth.

Wazir also tested positive soon after. She then completed a 20-day isolation at home. During this time, her sister caught the virus too. More recently, in July this year, six postgraduate trainees, including Wazir and a nurse from her ward, got infected. All were vaccinated and couldn’t track the root of the exposure.

Something similar happened with Dr Adil from the Institute of Kidney Diseases (IKD). In June 2020, he got infected and brought the virus home. He and his wife, also a doctor, self-treated and remained in isolation. Six months later, his wife got infected again and Dr Adil got exposed too. “There is zero compensation for all that is happening to me and my family,” says the doctor, adding that the government should consult them to know what they need.

NO PROTECTION

Medics in hazmat suits are seen working at the Covid-19 ward

 of Lahore’s Mayo Hospital | Aun Jafri/Whites Star

A year into the pandemic, there is still no regular supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) at hospitals around the country. “The mask I’m wearing, I bought it on my own,” says Dr Adil. “During the second wave, when the PPEs [mainly the gowns and masks] supply was started, we were told to wash them after use, as there weren’t enough.”

The shortage expands to healthcare centres in Quetta and Panjgur. Patients frequenting the facilities cough about in out-patient service areas, while the healthcare workers have the bare minimum protection and are often just wearing gowns and masks.

Coming from rural Sindh, the reality of living in Karachi was a rude awakening for Kashif. He was not prepared for the city’s high rents, unreliable transport (especially during initial lockdowns) and the hurriedness that comes with city life. The experience was made worse by the irregular salary schedule.

“They stretch the lifelines of the kit to as many hours as they can, until it is only worth throwing away,” says Dr Hanif Luni, general secretary of the Young Doctors Association (YDA) in Balochistan. “How do you expect people who haven’t been paid their due monthly salaries to buy anything on their own?” he asks. “We have been operating on donations from businesses and charities.”

In April last year, a month into the virus spreading like wildfire, around 150 doctors were arrested from Quetta city for protesting the lack of PPEs and appropriate equipment across the province. At that time, the province was at the centre of an outbreak in the country, with thousands of pilgrims crossing the border from Iran, triggering community transmission on Pakistani soil.

The healthcare workers boycotted services and the protests spread to cities in Punjab.

A couple of days later, President Arif Alvi was noticed chairing a Covid-19 briefing by the Punjab government wearing an N-95 mask, infuriating the medical community across the country. The Balochistan government said that they were agreeing to the health workers demands and also extending ad hoc contracts of about 500 doctors.

NO JOB SECURITY

These reactive measures are often temporary and taken without proper planning. And it is the doctors who pay the price for this lack of planning too.

The doctors who were appointed on ad hoc basis for the pandemic response — which also included 250 doctors and nurses as announced by the Balochistan health department — aren’t regularly receiving salaries. “I would say 15 to 20 percent have been paid salaries from time to time,” claims Dr Luni. “When the infection surges would dial down, the health workers would be laid off and, a few months later, when the cases would rise again, they would reappoint them with no backlog clearance.”

The appointed medical officers — men and women — are now among scores of postgraduate trainees who haven’t been paid in the past 10 months. Health workers report that, with hospitals facing a dearth of professionals, medical equipment and medicines, patients resort to violence. There are also limited slots for further training. (Balochistan has only two tertiary care facilities which also serve as training centres).

In such a scenario, it is only natural that young doctors are disillusioned. A big chunk of female students pick family life, while men go for private services. In Balochistan, trainees wanting to specialise in areas such orthopaedic surgery, endocrinology and general patient surgery look outside their hometowns and provinces or, those with means, outside the country.

Postgraduate training slots in Punjab were also reduced by at least two-thirds between 2020 and 2021. More than 10,000 doctors across the province are unemployed, unable to continue beyond their one-year internships.

Dr Sadia, a resident of Gujranwala, applied for an ad hoc medical officer position at two different places and has been waiting on results for the past eight months. “Less than 10 percent of people are selected from thousands of applicants and, each year, we hear how candidates pay lakhs to secure the seat,” she says.

The handful who make it are not guaranteed a full year of employment, because they are required to give up the seat if a public service commission candidate is available to secure it permanently.

On any given day, Zeeshan Noor, a member of YDA Punjab, who is also struggling to enrol in postgraduate training in dermatology, receives calls from medical graduates needing a job. “A few days ago, I heard from a desperate recent graduate wanting to meet as soon as possible,” he says. “She came to us saying her mother passed away, father has Covid-19 and she needs a job. Any job, private or public, would do, she told me.”

EXIT PAKISTAN

While doctors are often portrayed as miracle workers who can give people a second lease on life, Pakistan’s young doctors appear to be waiting for a miracle themselves. Understandably, many are done waiting.

Dr Rohit Keswani completed his MBBS from Chandka Medical College two years ago, ended his one-year housejob in surgery and then joined as a frontline worker against Covid-19 last year. On any given day, Keswani collects Covid-19 samples and manages patients inside the health facility. Holidays come and pass by, and families such as Keswani’s continue waiting to get salary clearance and spend time together.

As time passes by, and his hope to get a permanent contract staggers, he knows he needs to look elsewhere. Currently, he’s preparing for his Occupational English Test (OET) exam — a language test for medical practitioners to be eligible to be considered for residency programmes and, eventually, licences in the UK and the US. “I’m trying to secure a seat in Karachi for the exam,” he says. “Currently, seats are booked for at least three months.”

Pakistan produces an estimated 14,000 doctors each year. The Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) states that around 60 percent of the students, majority of whom are women, don’t pursue postgraduate training or any service. “Around 15 percent of the remaining have interest and actively look for postgraduate training opportunities,” says Dr Qaiser Sajjad, the organisation’s secretary general.

Owing to the scarcity of training positions in the public sector, while some go for private positions, those with additional means and ambitions appear for foreign training and subsequent licences. As per a conservative estimate, the US and the UK currently house at least 30,000 Pakistani doctors in all. A few thousands, as per unofficial figures, include those opting for Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.

The country at present houses a little over 200,000 doctors and 116,659 nurses. In the past two years alone, over 2,000 healthcare workers across categories of physicians, nurses and pharmacists have registered with the government’s Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment, for placements abroad.

In a recently post-Brexit world, and a month before Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic, a memorandum of understanding was signed between Pakistan’s employment bureau, AFCO Private Limited (a private recruiting agency in Pakistan) and the UK’s MMC recruitment group, in which it was agreed that Pakistan would provide 150,000 medical professionals, including doctors, nurses and pharmacists to the UK.

Later, during the same year, Kuwait’s government and Pakistan signed agreements stating that Pakistan would send 600 medical professionals, in different batches, to combat the coronavirus. By June 2021, as many as 1,134 healthcare professionals, including doctors, staff nurses and technicians have made it to the Gulf state, as tweeted by the Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development.

This year, the inflow of remittances witnessed a spike by 17 percent, a milestone for the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government, whose manifesto has been to facilitate investment of overseas Pakistanis in the economy. At home, however, brain drain continues with young professionals leaving the country.

Doctors leaving Pakistan is nothing new. But with the pandemic making more and more young doctors feel like they are expendable, it is no surprise that young doctors are looking elsewhere for greener pastures.

TESTING TIMES

While the situation for young doctors continues to remain uncertain, the current graduating medical students have another conundrum at their hands.

Maham Arooj is a Peshawar-based fresh medical graduate, completing her internship in medicine and surgery this year. If nothing had changed in the year of her graduation, a year of training would have made her eligible to be a certified doctor in Pakistan, and free to pursue another job or postgraduate training. But receiving a licence is no longer that straightforward a process.

In 2019, the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC), the official body for regulating medical, dental education and practice in the country was dissolved. The body was replaced by the Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC), a nine-member body headed by the president, initiated on the promise of establishing standardised reforms in the training and education of healthcare workers.

The formation of the body was widely criticised and protested against for being illegal, with organisations such as the YDA ‘rejecting’ the body because no elections were conducted to appoint members. But a few months down the road, a Pakistan Medical Commission Act, 2020 was introduced, gathering the ire of students, trainees and medical institutions.

Under the new ruling, a National Licensing Exam (NLE) has been introduced, directing all medical graduates from September 2020 to pass the exam to attain a full licence of practice, previously undertaken only by foreign graduates and practitioners. In the past several months, doctors from Dera Ismail Khan to Islamabad to Peshawar have held various demonstrations against the new directive, applicable retrospectively on candidates originally registered with the now-defunct PMDC.

Medical representative bodies and educational institutes have argued that the new exam, which is comparable to the US licensing exam in its nature, if executed, poses a question on the credibility of students and schools that conduct five years’ worth of professional exams, getting a candidate ready to enter the market. A petition filed in the Lahore High Court by the students was also ruled in favour of the PMC.

“It’s an additional financial burden on the parents and the student to get registered,” says Dr Qaiser Sajjad of the PMA. Sajjad asks that, if a candidate fails this new exam after having already qualified from a medical college, who is to stop him or her from opening a private practice somewhere?

“I and all my batchmates are boycotting this exam,” says medical graduate Maham Arooj. “The date of the exam registration has already passed and I’m hopeful that the students who enrolled when the PMDC was functional, will be exempted.”

The PMC website, however, states that exams will be conducted in the last week of August.

This bureaucratic chaos has been created while other parts of the world witnessed final year students collecting their graduation degrees early to join the Covid-19 response and share the burden of overworked and understaffed medical facilities in their countries. In April 2020, at least 13 medical schools in the US fast-tracked their timelines and allowed students to graduate early and join hospitals.

***
In an environment riddled with issues of non-payment of salaries and ill-fitting contracts rooted in corruption, lack of postgraduate training opportunities leading to growing unemployment and brain drain from the country, what is a 25-year-old, fresh out of medical school thinking?

One young doctor provides great insight with just one sentence. “Getting by is one thing and living is another thing altogether,” he says. The disappointment in his voice, the lethargy caused by running around Covid-infected patients and fighting a battle with no recognition, protection and even basic benefits, says more than words ever could.

Header: A file photo of Young Doctors Association activists staging a protest in Peshawar | Shahbaz Butt/White Star

The writer reports on labour and the environment. She can be reached at haniyajaved1@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, August 22nd, 2021

PAKISTAN

SPOTLIGHT: PERWEEN’S LEGACY OF HOPE
Fahad Naveed

Published August 22, 2021 -

Indu Sharma as Perween Rahman in Into Dust

A docudrama directed by an Oscar-winning filmmaker about Karachi’s assassinated social activist Perween Rahman is to debut on Amazon Prime on August 24. Icon finds out more in an exclusive

Into Dust, a docudrama by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Orlando von Einsiedel, begins with a phone call between Perween Rahman (played by Indu Sharma) and her sister Aquila Ismail (played by Sudha Bhuchar).

Rahman tells Ismail that she loves her, before hanging up the call.

It is March 13, 2013. The day when Rahman, a real-life hero, was assassinated in Karachi. The architect, who had turned her energies towards social development since the early 1980s and was the head of the Orangi Pilot Project-Research and Training Institute (OPP-RTI), was murdered on her way back from work.

Releasing eight years after that fateful day, Into Dust tells the story of Rahman's work and death, and Ismail's ongoing struggle for justice following Rahman’s murder.

Ismail has not seen the film yet. “It’s too painful for me,” she tells Icon. “Too, too real and too, too painful.”

But while Ismail may not have seen the docudrama, set to release on Amazon Prime on August 24, she has played a big role in making the film feel so real. Listed as an executive producer on the film, she gave her go-ahead on all the creative decisions of the story. “There was nothing that went by without discussing with me,” she says.

Ismail had long conversations with filmmaker von Einsiedel, and Charlotte Wolf, the film’s writer. “They were always in contact with me,” Ismail says. “Throughout.”

When Ismail was first approached about the project, sometime in 2018, she had emphasised two things to the filmmakers. First, she told them that her sister loved Karachi and Pakistan, and so there could be “nothing against our country” in the film. And, second, because Rahman’s murder trial was still ongoing, Ismail said there could be nothing in the film that could “jeopardise our case.”

“We are seeking justice from our system and they are delivering,” she tells Icon, recalling those early conversations.

Actress Sudha Bhuchar in Into Dust

The filmmakers agreed. They knew that this was a story they wanted to tell.

The reason Rahman’s story spoke to von Einsiedel so much was that it celebrated the bravery of an extraordinary woman. A Pakistani hero who he believes “deserves” to be a global hero. “Somebody who wouldn’t back down in the face of criminality and the powerful, and threats from the powerful,” von Einsiedel says.

The film focuses particularly on Rahman’s fight for the water rights of underserved communities in Karachi.

A GLOBAL ISSUE

“Water is the petroleum for the next century.” This quote from the Goldman Sachs Global Investment Report 2008 sets the context for Into Dust, right at the onset of the film.

While the film looks at Rahman’s work around water theft in Karachi, water scarcity is a global issue. “This film began with looking for a story ultimately about water,” von Einsiedel tells Icon. “There is a growing global water crisis, mostly driven by climate change, but also by poor decisions globally about how we use water. And, of course, this is one of the most precious resources in the world — we all need it.”

When the filmmaker came across Rahman’s work around water rights in Karachi, something clicked. “I try to tell stories about issues that are global in relevance,” von Einsiedel says. “I believe the way to tell those types of stories is to focus on what is ostensibly a very small story — a story of a single person or a small group of people, who are doing something to fight for that particular issue.”

The British filmmaker has successfully done this in multiple documentary films before. His Peabody Award-winning feature documentary Virunga tells the story of four individuals fighting to protect a national park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And his Academy Award-winning documentary short The White Helmets follows three ‘Syria Civil Defence’ volunteers as they work in Aleppo and across Syria.

A scene from the film showing Perween Rahman at work

Von Einsiedel decided to try his hand at making a docudrama with Into Dust. “In the end, you try and work with the medium you think gives that story the best chance at success,” he says, speaking about the decision. In this case, he also felt that because there had already been “a great documentary” about Rahman — Mahera Omar’s Perween Rahman: The Rebel Optimist — there wouldn’t be a lot of value in making another one. “We felt that we needed to do something different creatively,” he says.

In Into Dust the director still takes a character-driven approach, usually seen in narrative documentaries. Rahman’s story arc in the film focuses on the water issue and the activist’s work around it.

The reason Rahman’s story spoke to von Einsiedel so much was that it celebrated the bravery of an extraordinary woman. A Pakistani hero who he believes “deserves” to be a global hero. “Somebody who wouldn’t back down in the face of criminality and the powerful, and threats from the powerful,” von Einsiedel says.

Ismail tells Icon that, in the initial days, even when it wasn’t clear what the film would be, it was made known to her that the focus would be on how people are dealing with water shortages. “And that was a very big part of Perween’s work,” Ismail says. “She had written that seminal report which actually exposed the water mafia.”

Of course, Rahman worked on many other issues as well, including her work on land encroachments, which led to her making some influential enemies.

“With somebody like Perween and her life, you could focus on lots of different aspects of it,” von Einsiedel says, adding that she did a lot of remarkable work.

“In this case, the funding for this film was from a foundation called the Grundfos Foundation, who ultimately care about the issues related to water and making sure people have the right to water around the world,” he says. “So the decision was to focus on that aspect of Perween’s work.”

THE OTHER HALF

Perween Rahman

Rahman’s work is only one part of the narrative. The other is Ismail’s ongoing struggle for justice for her sister. Ismail’s story arc in Into Dust primarily focuses on the early days after her sister’s murder, that led to her decision to stay in Karachi, instead of returning to the UAE where she was settled at the time.

In reality, it has been a long eight years since that decision.

A day after Rahman’s murder, the police had claimed on national television that the Taliban were behind the killing. But this raised more questions. Why would the Taliban kill her? And how was the murder solved in a day?

With these questions began the struggle for justice for Rahman.

A petition was filed before the Supreme Court for reinvestigation of the case. And a group of men were identified and are being tried by an anti-terrorism court. Final arguments in the case were presented earlier this month.

It has been a long legal battle, with the Supreme Court once admonishing law enforcement agencies, saying they seemed “helpless before land and water mafias.”

But Ismail has not lost hope in all this time. This is also what she represents in the film — hope.

“There are plenty of things going on in the world that are very upsetting,” says von Einsiedel, when talking about the film’s narrative structure. “There is a version of this story where you make this film [by telling] the story of Perween’s life, and it shows the extraordinary work she’s done and then it ends with her tragic assassination.”

“That’s truism,” the filmmaker says. “But, in some ways, it misses another aspect of the truth.”

He points out that, after Rahman was killed, her sister moved back to Karachi and continued her work. She kept her legacy alive and did not let Rahman’s death be the end of everything she worked for.

“And today they’re continuing their incredible work,” von Einsiedel says, speaking about OPP. “It’s very inspiring, and that felt very important for us to show. It felt hopeful.”

“Actually, they wanted to give a message of optimism,” Ismail says. “Perween was all about that.”

A TALE OF ONE CITY

Perween in a meeting with OPP founder Akhtar Hameed Khan

 | Justice for Perween Rahman


Besides being a film about Ismail and Rahman, Into Dust is also a film about Karachi — the city that the sisters called home for most of their lives, and that Rahman continued working for till her last breath.

But owing to security concerns, the film was only partially shot in Karachi. The rest of the shooting was done in India. Von Einsiedel says that the initial assumption was that everything will be shot in Karachi. But they were advised against it.

Nonetheless, the film and the Karachi on screen never feel inauthentic. In fact, considering that a lot of the team and cast are non-Pakistanis, Into Dust is surprisingly nuanced. While exploring Rahman and Ismail’s relationship with the city, for example, it is mentioned that their family came from Dhaka to Karachi in 1972.

Von Einsiedel says he is always interested in exploring what it is that makes people decide to devote their lives to something bigger than themselves. He believes that having to flee what is Bangladesh today left an “indelible mark” on Rahman.

Ismail also shares Rahman’s love for Karachi. “Karachi is a city which opens its arms to everyone,” she says. “It is a city with such a large heart.”

This love for Karachi comes through in the film too. And this is clearly owing to extensive research. “Creatively, everything came from Perween’s friends and family,” von Einsiedel says. “All the input there was from Pakistan.”

Von Einsiedel describes Into Dust as a “universal story of bravery against powerful forces.” One hopes that the film, and the impact of Rahman and Ismail’s work, travels far and wide.

Published in Dawn, ICON, August 22nd, 2021

PAKISTAN

Misogynistic narrative

Editorial

DAWN.COM

Published August 23, 2021

TO be a victim of gender-based violence in this country is to be violated over and over again. From far too many fellow Pakistanis — mostly male but not exclusively so — such a woman will not find support, but censure that will compound her trauma. Instead of empathy, she will encounter sexist slurs that will intensify her humiliation.

This ugly pattern of victim-blaming is playing out yet again in the horrifying case of the female TikToker assaulted by hundreds of men on Independence Day at the Minar-i-Pakistan in Lahore. An FIR was filed against nearly 400 men; among the charges is “assault or use of criminal force against woman and stripping her of her clothes”. The videos of the attack that flooded social media show the men crowding around her, pawing at her, throwing her into the air — it is unbearable to watch. And yet society has found ways to blame the victim; indeed, some have even accused her of ‘staging a drama’ for publicity, a willing pawn in her own degradation. It beggars belief.

The fact is, case after case of violence against women has laid bare the frightening extent of misogyny to be found in society. Even Noor Mukaddam, who was tortured, stabbed to death and beheaded last month, has been shown no mercy by this self-righteous brigade that has resorted to specious moral arguments to somehow put the onus on her for her terrible fate.

Read: The roots of misogyny

Victim-blaming is of course not exclusive to Pakistan, but in patriarchal societies with their restrictive norms for women, it acquires a more menacing quality. A female is seen as vulnerable and weak but also culpable by default, responsible for ‘enticing’ or ‘provoking’ men. All manner of warped reasoning is employed to support that position. Law-enforcement authorities also display such bias, for after all they too are products of this environment. In September 2020, after a woman was gang-raped in front of her children on the Lahore-Sialkot Motorway, the Lahore city police chief repeatedly implied that she was partly to blame for not taking a busier road at that time of night, travelling without her husband’s permission, etc.

In the recent Aug 14 incident, a number of arrests have been made, with the government vowing that more suspects will be taken into custody. One hopes the perpetrators are meted out the exemplary punishment they deserve. However, nothing will change in the long run. This country will remain unsafe for women, and gender-based violence will continue to be massively underreported because victims do not want to risk being pilloried in the court of public opinion.

Pakistani society has a problem; it needs to acknowledge it. But there are also many who are outraged and sickened by what they see around them. Their voices must be heeded, and the state should take the lead in changing a deeply misogynistic narrative.

Published in Dawn, August 23rd, 2021

Following repeated incidents of assault, Bakhtawar calls for banning single men from public spaces

IMAGES STAFF
DESK REPORT

Says men should not be allowed out without being escorted by women, "perhaps then they will think twice before assaulting women".



Incidents of violence targetting women are not 'isolated' in Pakistan as many blindly argue but the last one month has been particularly distressing with multiple stories coming to the fore.

Reacting to one such story shared by journalist Sabin Agha on Twitter, Bakhtawar Bhutto Zardari called for banning single men from public spaces.

"Another harrowing experience – witnessed by police who refused to help despite their ability to call for back up as well as use weapons to disperse crowd. Trusted to help and instead complicit," she wrote.

"Men should be banned from public spaces. We need more women to safeguard women," she added.

On Monday, she reiterated her demand and said she stands by banning men from public.

"Single men should not be allowed out without being escorted by sisters, mothers, wives or daughters – perhaps then they will think twice before assaulting women," tweeted the daughter of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and former president Asif Ali Zardari. "With repeated and increasing incidents of assault, no better option."

The calls for making Pakistan safe for women have been growing louder – and angrier – as the cases of violence keep coming to light.

Read: IG Punjab takes notice of second female harassment incident in Lahore on Independence Day

In the recent Aug 14 incident where a female TikToker was assaulted by hundreds of men at the Minar-i-Pakistan in Lahore, a number of arrests have been made, with the government vowing that more suspects will be taken into custody. One hopes the perpetrators are meted out the exemplary punishment they deserve and as a nation, we will do away with the ugly pattern of victim-blaming.

Until then, until the time the country's people realise that Independence Day – and all other public holidays and public spaces – are as much for the women of Pakistan as for the men, strong measures will need to be put into place so that women don't have to keep looking over their shoulder.

PAKISTAN

The mob assault near Minar-i-Pakistan and why ‘Mera Jism, Meri Marzi’ matters more than ever

Our existence and freedoms should not be dependent on whether the men in our lives, our society or our government ‘allow’ it.

Maria Amir

Updated 18 Aug, 2021

In a way, it makes sense that the past two months of case after case depicting women’s bodies being violated, butchered, then filmed and circulated for public consumption would culminate in a video of a woman being assaulted and passed around by, literally, hundreds of men on Independence Day at Azadi Flyover near Minar-i-Pakistan. There can be no more obvious metaphor for how depraved our society really is. It is hard to imagine a more powerful symbolic representation of how we have twisted the very meaning of ‘independence’ and ‘freedom’ to cater solely to one gender at the expense of another. There really is no other way to say it, we are in the midst of a gender apartheid.

The fact that Pakistani women are unsafe comes as no surprise to most women and the men who pretend to be shocked at the level of violence women are facing ought to ask themselves how they have managed to evade or ignore this realisation until now. Such willful blindness is the ultimate privilege that all men in our society enjoy — an ability to pretend that violence against women is not systemic, that it’s just a ‘few bad apples’ or that our ‘culture and values’ somehow guarantee women’s safety and our protection because it places the responsibility for both in the hands of the very gender that systemically attacks women — men. The sheer barrage of news reports and cases coming to light over the past months highlight the breadth and scale of violence that women face.

The attacks range from a viral video of two men beating their mother and sister with a helmet because the woman asked for her inheritance to the assault of a couple in a hotel room — the case in which Usman Mirza is the prime suspect and accused. From the case of Umar Khalid Memon who is accused of torturing his wife and killing her in Hyderabad to the case of Raza Ali, who is accused of shooting his wife and injuring his children in Peshawar and the now infamous incident of Zahir Jaffer, the primary suspect and accused in the murder of a woman on the premises of his home.

It is high time we begin naming, shaming and calling out abusers, rapists and murderers in these cases rather than burdening the victim even further. We desperately need to refocus how we frame violence when it is committed upon female bodies. The structural framing of ‘violence against women’ often tends to spotlight the victim of the violence rather than its perpetrator. It begs the question of what a woman did to ‘incite’ or ‘deserve’ violence and men in our society, from police officials and family members to media anchors and the prime minister himself, latch on to this as a template for victim blaming. Pakistan is by no means the only country where such violence happens, but it is one of the few countries where both society and the state apparatus, provides the perpetrators of violence against women with a plethora of safeguards and excuses. Whether one blames women’s clothing, women’s mobility, general lack of education, segregation, or the idea that men are incapable of controlling themselves (a consequence of them not being ‘robots’), it all amounts to the same thing. That women are in some way responsible for what happens to them. That women’s bodies are inherently a problem … for men.

Despite the multiple clarifications over various victim blaming comments targeting women that Prime Minister Imran Khan claims were repeatedly taken ‘out of context’, he still couldn’t resist tagging ‘however much a woman is provocative’ as a qualifier to his long-awaited condemnation of rapists. This implies that provocation is an inherent part of women’s existence, that our bodies carry it and that it is men’s job to ‘resist’ it. It implies a struggle on the part of all men when confronted with women’s bodies, in both public and private spaces, that they must overcome so that they don’t abuse us.

The very word ‘Aurat’ is derived from the Arabic word ‘awrah’ which is a direct inference to genitalia or nudity. The term entered Urdu through Persian where it still retained its original meaning of ‘private parts that needed to be covered’. Persian dictionaries also illustrate the word as ‘sharmgah’ or a ‘place of shame’. This etymology helps us understand the consistent objectification of women’s bodies and why the entirety of so-called ‘honour culture’ is constructed around policing them. ‘Honour’ culture is framed around the premise that only men have honour and only women can bring shame. Therefore, women are held responsible for causing men to lose their ‘honour’ and anything that men do to restore it is deemed acceptable, even desirable. The same logic applies to all the violence women face when men perceive that any punishment of women — whether it is accusing them of blasphemy for protesting at the Aurat March or killing them for rejecting a marriage proposal or trying to shoot a child in the head for wanting to go to school — is justified because men feel they have restored so-called lost ‘honour’.

Women’s bodies have always been under attack and the cases that now plague our news feeds on social media are in no way new. The marked difference is that the only way to garner enough public attention and mobilise enough outrage to push authorities into taking violence against women seriously has been for such violence to go viral online. As harmful as this often is for the victim, it is unfortunate that video evidence seems to be the only way to even convince most men that what we protest about at Aurat Marches and what they dismiss every day as ‘western propaganda used to malign Pakistan’ is, in fact, both real and deadly. Most, of course, are still not convinced.

For these men, it is the women marching and protesting about ‘Mera Jism, Meri Marzi’ that are the considered the real problem not the men who violate that jism. In a society where men have absolute ‘marzi’ over women’s ‘jism’, the loss of control that would occur if women had autonomy over their own bodies could upend this entire system predicated on male ownership over women’s bodies. This is why this slogan is so crucial for women’s emancipation — the very idea of women taking ownership over their own bodies wrests control away from men and that is what we must do. Because enough is enough! Men should not have the right to decide whether a woman is allowed to live, whether she can go to school, who she marries and when, whether she can drive or wear colorful clothes or laugh openly. Our existence and freedoms should not be dependent on whether the men in our lives, in our society or in our government ‘allow’ it.

As the video of the unfortunate woman being assaulted by scores of men on Independence Day circulated on social media the top trending hashtag in response was ‘Not All Men’. This tells us where men’s priorities lie even amid the evidence staring them in the face. Do all men assault, rape, trap and control women? Of course not. But all men could if they chose to and they would face no consequences for it.

As things stand, the choice of whatever happens to a woman’s body ultimately, always rests with a man. It should not. It must not.



Maria Amir is a former journalist and Fulbright Fellow. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Global Gender Studies at SUNY, Buffalo. Her research interests include South Asian feminist folklore and Women’s Movements.

PAKISTAN

EDUCATION AS POLITICS

Umair Javed

Published August 23, 2021 

The writer teaches politics and sociology at Lums.

Twitter: @umairjav


PUBLIC schooling and government regulation of the education sector more broadly are both developmental and political phenomena. Developmental because they aim to equip future citizens with knowledge and skills that may allow them to contribute towards their personal and societal growth. A well-educated citizenry can therefore achieve its own material and intellectual aspirations and help raise the material and intellectual well-being of society as a whole.

Seen in this light, it should be in the interest of every conscientious government to expand access to education and improve the quality of education available. There are debates on how best to do this in contemporary Pakistan — some argue that supporting education entrepreneurship through the low cost fee-paying private sector can fill the gaps that the government does not have resources for. Others argue that providing education is now a constitutional right so any fiscal and competence constraints should be overcome to expand public schooling. Some will argue for a hybrid model where different types of systems may work in tandem to achieve the basic goal of access and quality.

While the future of any country’s children is a high-stakes matter and should be treated as such, such developmental questions around education are fairly standard. There are differences in approach and methods but at least some semblance of agreement on what the end goal should be.

This consensus becomes a little more complicated once public schooling and government regulation of the school education sector is analysed as a political phenomenon. And there are several reasons why it should be done so.

Increasingly it seems, more opportunities in higher education and the workforce are reserved for those on the ‘right’ side of the class divide.

Firstly, and most relevantly in Pakistan’s current context, schooling forms a direct relationship with citizenship through the curriculum. What kind of citizens are emerging from the schooling system? What is being taught and to whom? What kind of messaging is being introduced at impressionable ages? What will the legacy of this messaging be in the long run? These are questions that are not and should not be tangential to discussions about education in any country.

A review of the history of primary school expansion in the 19th and early 20th century across the West reveals that in many places, political considerations were a central part of why school access was deemed an important goal. As states increased political participation through extension of electoral franchise, the schooling system was identified as a key avenue through which to generate compliant and supportive citizens. Depending on the ideological proclivities of the state (or of different ruling parties), schools would impart different types of curricula. Current debates and hand-wringing on ‘Critical Race Theory’ in American schools is part of the same phenomenon. Conservatives don’t want racial realities to be taught in schools, while progressives are pushing for greater societal reckoning with racial inequities.

A second reason why school education is political is because its actual form and associated regulation has powerful distributional consequences. By distributional we mean how do different socioeconomic segments in society access education, what they stand to gain from it, and what are the long-term effects of any differences that may exist across different strata.

Take the example of a seemingly benign decision in Pakistan, such as the opening up of for-profit private schools and the allowance for a foreign credential system. Over the space of three decades, we’ve ended up with a large high-cost private school industry (with the power to shape government decisions) and the credential-based segregation of children on the basis of their class background through the O/A level system. Increasingly it seems, more opportunities in higher education and the workforce are reserved for those on the ‘right’ side of this class divide.

More worryingly, with the children of all decision-makers safely ensconced in high-cost private schools with the guarantee of a foreign credential, there is no incentive for anyone to fix anything that may be wrong in schools that lie outside this space. This is a glaring example of politics at work through the education system.

Citizenship ideals and distributional consequences should also form the basis through which ongoing government interventions in Pakistan’s education space are analysed, especially the Single National Curriculum (SNC).

At its formal launch, the prime minister stated that the SNC was a step in removing class divides in the educational sector by setting similar guidelines for textbooks across different types of schools. Well and good in theory, but given the bureaucratic machinery around textbook approvals and the differing quality of textbooks being published, what kind of standardisation will actually emerge in practice? And if the entire edifice of class divide through high-cost fee-paying schools with a different credential system remains in place, does this intervention actually serve its stated purpose? As some parents are already suggesting, those with political clout can get away with strong-arming regulators into approving their preferred books while others remain stuck with lower quality content.

Secondly, the use of religious injunctions to impart ethical, civic-oriented lessons — another key pillar of the SNC — is not a particularly controversial idea on its own. But has any consideration been given as to what the long-term impact of this might be, in a multi-ethnic, multi-sect polity, where gender-based subjugation is also frequently rationalised under the garb of religion? If citizenship ideals inculcated in the early years are repeatedly intertwined with particular religious outlooks, what kind of citizens are we left with in the long run?

The diffused and long-term impact of such interventions is precisely why they need to be interrogated not just from a developmental angle but also as issues of immense political importance. This responsibility rests with policymakers tasked with shaping the education space but also with opposition politicians and civil society organisations, who need to induce more debate and greater transparency in the entire process.

Published in Dawn, August 23rd, 2021