The fact is that intrigue and not professionalism will get you where you want to go? It does not matter what and how competent you are and I get a number of such requests where they point to favouritism and nepotism even in private sector. The ladies are under severe stress for the male-dominated deprived and depraved boss or likely boss seeks favours that are carnal in nature. When I was posted for the first time and on my first visit to the National Agriculture Research Station (NARC) a committee was interrogating the victim and enquiring about shameless things instead of arresting the guilty. What happened thereafter is now history.
I was analysing the various statements made by the all powerful. There is confusion between organisations and institutions. They tell me that HEC and all these statutory bodies are institutions. I disagree. These are petty organisations in which intrigue and such underhand activities abound. The egos are so inflated that even the most ardent Freudian would consider them as verging on the schizophrenic. They are fixed in time. One such person was so ardently involved in doing whatever he thought was right that he finally ended up in the calaboose. What then is education and when is it complete? Is it complete when a degree is in hand? I put this question to my PhD supervisor and he is categorically of the view that this degree does not give you a license to be an exhibitionist but forces you to live up to the expectations that this degree enjoins on you. I was chastened. He further said that the PhD is supposed to be an example and set one for the others, that they are humble and do not tout their degrees as if they have conquered this earth. They are not earth conquerors. It is the mind that is constructed and what is more the process of constructing it is important.
By this definition everyone in this world is educated in some way or the other. HEC is constructing itself and deconstructing itself and it has done so many times and everyone is taking a pot shot even from Karachi. The organisational structure that was set up by Musharraf under the first Chairman was flawed. It is only a body that sends money chegues to the various universities. So it is banking facility with zero interest rate and it has thus created a lobby for itself through a kind of organisational graft. I hate to use the word institution for this organisation for when I use the word it epitomises the best in the thoughtful world. Along with this it has brought in a regulatory mechanism of equating degrees and of what not about plagiarism. It has taken upon itself the holier than thou attitude.
It was in its formative stage that Comsat was holding a seminar on Biotechnology and the state of the art (paper that was to be read was by someone who till that date had not been involved and I suggested to the Secretary S&T the name of one eminent such person - no names for or against). He agreed that Comsat had erred and asked me to write to him. I made the request and added that the purpose of a seminar is either to disseminate knowledge or use it for ego dissemination and that in this case it was the latter. The next day the gentleman about whom I had written became a minister and that letter was passed on to him. I could not care less but that started a fight that boils over every now and then. If an audit is carried out today or whenever there would be many a case for prosecution.
The argument that only the HEC can appoint a CEO is fallacious. Its funds are from the taxpayer and what the first Chairman got from Musharraf another one got from Zia. These generals not knowing the civil mind are easily led astray. But why should the HEC appoint a person from within its own fold and why it should not be through an open and transparent action.
Are the universities of Pakistan incapable of solving their own problems and why should some individuals are seeking to perpetuate themselves? Institutions are built on solid grounds and they are for a long time and certainly the universities of Pakistan deserve autonomy and if they have that why should they seek windfalls and not be able to govern themselves. Should a Vice Chancellor be appointed on caste and ethnic basis? Want me to take the emperor's clothes off? There are sneakers in our society. How will you get rid of them? Puzzle-solving and model building are part of a process of self construction. Have you ever seen a Vice chancellor or a Rector ever doing some mind-constructing of his own self? My education and my knowledge that I acquire becomes a part of me if it changes me. It must change me for the better. While lecturing at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington I was told that there was a Pakistani before me whose publications were so many that when he evaluated them it seemed that he had written a book every so many seconds. I moved away. I had known of some other gentleman (sorry no gentleman) who had done plagiarism in Agriculture but that is another story.
Should anyone tolerate an institution that has played parochial games with the Pakistanis? Can I disagree with my teachers and reason things with them? Or should I become a slave and allow him to trample on me with his outlandish and obsolete views? What is then the institutional role of the system? It is based on knowledge and well aware that if this knowledge is not upfront then the matter is lost. All our institutions are old and hackneyed. All our current and the latest ones have been created with guilty intent and are thus not to be catered to.
Musharraf can roost with his own doings. At one of the meetings he was told not to exaggerate the reforms on the bidding of the Western powers. He was too full of himself and where is he? In another land. What a pity that we cannot look after our own, for our own does not want to be looked after here in Pakistan. Pity this nation that will go to any extent to provide for whatever is unworthy of this nation and therefore has a stinking smell in it. Look at all these public-sector bodies for they are neither organisations nor institutions just a conglomerate of individuals doing hanky panky. The way forward is costless but requires men of courage and conviction to make honest mistakes and to recover from any weakness that emerges.