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Conf on 'Suggestions
for Development of Chitral’
-letter4
We thank Fardad Ali Shah for arranging an impressive
seminar on the subject of Chitral's Development and Future Strategy. As
a person belonging to a family with strong credentials of service to the
people of Chitral, he has kept up the tradition to think for the people first.
During the seminar on the subject mentioned above every speaker gave
very cogent advices in respect of Chitral's Development but the irony is
that National Assembly of Pakistan is devoid of scholars, intellectuals
and well educated people and much like previous Assemblies it is full of
chawdries, vaderas, khans etc and they represent their own limited class
instead of the people at large. Our great religion Islam teaches us to
be God fearing but sorry to say our rulers and head of Development
Agencies though Muslims are but without the fear of God.
I would like to quote one example of late MP Bhandara. He was the member
of National Assembly , he invited us among others the District Nazim,
the Ex MNA, the DCO to a dinner at Chitral. After dinner he delivered a
speech and conveyed his feelings that he was allotted a special grant of
Rs.80 lacs for the purpose of development. He allotted that amount for
widening/improvement of Kalash valley road but according to feasibility
report of the PWD, only Rs.45 lacs was to be invested for improvement
of the roads and the remaining amount allocated for the purpose of
commission upto chief executives. This is the state of affairs of our
development agencies.
I therefore suggest that if we want to develop Chitral in real sense
then we should seriously work on the idea to establish a Chitral
Development Authority so that we can be able to get donations from
different donors directly and also we would be able to achieve an
integrated rural development of Infrastructure in the areas of
education, health, environment and economic development.
I further suggest that to achieve this goal a think tank may be
constituted and further similar effective seminars be arranged to discuss the
problems and submit solid recommendations on the subject.
Sahib Nadir Khan
Chitral.
Conf on 'Suggestions
for Development of Chitral’
-letter3
This refers to news item regarding the development of
Chitral conference. It was interesting to see how poor are set aside in
the hegemonic discourse of development. A professor brother of one of
the famous politician of the Frontier entered his Hujra one late
afternoon to see a number of people chatting. On enquiry he was told
that they were planning for the development of the poor. The professor,
hitting with his stick under the beds (charpai) shouted, “come out poor,
come out poor”, and then taught a life long lesson to the gathering in
one sentence that they cannot not plan for poor without including them,
and without listening them.
In the development of Chitral conference it sounds that the voice of 99%
poor people of Chitral sounded to have buried under the narratives of
development told by those who float in the wind of the powerful
development narratives. This should not surprise anyone, for, by
definition, a hegemonic discourse is one that attempts to totalise a
particular discourse over all other narratives. A hegemonic discourse
tries to achieve its objectives by obstructing the ability of other
narratives to present themselves. It employs well-thought-of,
well-planned and divisive tactics to subdue other narratives. By this I
am not asserting that a particular discourse is right or wrong, but
rather in what way a particular discourse represents segments of society
enmeshed in power relations. Where was the voice of more than 99% poor
people of Chitral.
I am not questioning why such conferences should be organized. The
question is to what extent the participants of the development
conference were qualified to talk about development. Did anyone of them
read out a single piece of paper that could be said a research paper
highlighting the needs and priorities of the majority of Chitral people.
We know about conferences where either well researched papers are read
out or the primary beneficiaries, the poor, are invited to share their
experiences of poverty. Of course, not every poor could be invited but
there are institutions which ensure at least minimum representation of
local people in such forum.
One such forum is that of the Local Support Organisations (LSOs), which
have evolved over more than twenty five years of participatory
development, and have representation of all the valleys and villages of
Chitral. For the last few years the LSOs have been organizing
development forum in different valleys of Chitral, and the experience
has been fascinating in a way that how poor people who are otherwise
supposed passive, retiring and dull, speak out their needs and issues.
Most of the participants of the development of Chitral conference have
been attending such development forum arranged by the LSOs, and also
have the idea that Chitral development forum was first suggested in one
of such LSO conference, which has been blindly and ignorantly negated by
the statement of the host of the development of Chitral conference,
which reads like ‘the conference was first in a series of conferences’.
In the presence of the representative forum of the LSOs, not simply the
idea of translating the development of Chitral conference into Chitral
development forum, and ultimately to Chitral development authority
sounds naive, but also the absence of LSO representatives, and less
necessarily the AKRSP officials, who could justifiably claim the credit
of helping establish the LSOs, in the said conference speaks volumes
about the extent to which such gatherings could be termed as
representativeness forum. That is not to pose the LSOs as contractors of
development. Though there are governance and management issues, at
Chitral level LSOs stand as the most powerful civil society
organisations with the membership of women and village organisations
beside other civil society and private organisations.
Appreciations of ChitralNews initiative by some of the readers misread
the discourse, and reinforce the role of Chitalnews, which will be
hegemonic if continued in the same way. The role of ChitralNews should
be to provide an impartial space to the critical but engaged voices that
speak of development rather than arranging such uneducated gatherings
destined to institutionalize as Chitral development authority.
Facilitating a development conference is appreciable but the decision
who should speak for whom and on what basis makes things questionable. A
reader in one of the letters to chitralnews.com writes that “Chitralnews
keeps all Chitralis informed wherever they may be around the world”. It
is not enough simply to inform, the important thing rather is to
question how an information is created, what does it constitute and what
interest does it serve. The issue is not that we know nothing, the issue
rather is we know a lot. Also it is not surprising if some of the
readers have come across the idea of Chitral development forum for the
first time.
Ali Sher,
Kuragh, Chitral
Conf on 'Suggestions
for Development of Chitral’
-letter2
I thank 'Chitral News' for organizing a path breaking
conference to seek suggestions for development of Chitral. The service
of Chitral News for dissemination of information to Chitralis across the
globe has been tremendous and it is hoped that this conference will be
successful in framing a development agenda for Chitral.
The proceedings of the conference as reported shows that almost all
participants have been active in development of Chitral in public and
private sectors and in their capacity as public representatives.
There is no doubt that a lot of development has taken place in Chitral
through government and NGO efforts and life is much better than it was
say two or three decades ago. It is also a fact that Chitral needs
further development to improve the quality of life of its people. The
conference highlighted three major areas of focus for development of
Chitral. These include utilization of Hydel power potential, linkages
with neighboring Tajikistan through air link and enactment of laws
banning locals from selling lands to outsiders. These are good ideas and
should be implemented and harnessing of Hydel power to cope with rising
energy costs have been a unanimous demand of the common man and doesn’t
need much discussion. The air link with Gorno-Badkhshan region of
Tajikistan is a good idea but in the long run it should be supplemented
through an all weather road link to promote trade and commerce in
addition to tourism.
Holistic development is a complex agenda and always needs additional
efforts and boost up for sustainability. Development is not all about
sufficient electricity or networks of roads. Development progresses in
accordance with set standards of a national psyche. It needs first of
all visionary leadership which believes in honesty, integrity, courage
and commitment. It needs good governance, rule of law and equality
before the law, transparency, meritocracy, accountability. Development
needs strong adherence and commitment to teachings of Islam in letter
and spirit.
Since our country is facing financial crunch and Chitral may not get
enough resources immediately to construct Hydel power stations as Reshun
type Hydel power stations costs in the region of 3 to 4 billion rupees.
Therefore I would suggest that we should work on the feasibility of
Hydel powers but at the same time we should continue working on
‘suggestions for development of Chitral’ and one suggestion could be to
better utilize the available scarce resources without misuse and
corruption. We should earnestly strive to improve the quality of our
existing institutions of security, justice, health, education and public
works through customer driven service culture. We should honestly accept
equality of man, freedom of thought and expression, rule of law that may
provide much needed conducive environment to get maximum benefits from
existing resources, structures and institutions.
Mir Wazir Khan
Awi-Chitral
Conf on 'Suggestions for
Development of Chitral’
-letter
'Chitral
News' since its commencement has been an important forum for
highlighting the problems faced by the people of Chitral. It keeps all
Chitralis informed wherever they may be around the world of the events
within Chitral and takes the issues to the computer screens of those in
the upper echelons who are otherwise unapproachable or rarely
approachable. In addition to this journalistic role, Chitral News has
launched a new initiative which is promising because of its focus on
development. It brought the key stakeholders together to explore
collectively the challenges for development in the district and possible
strategies to harness its resources and capture the potential
opportunities. Its Chief Editor, Wg Cdr (r) Fardad Ali Shah in his
welcome address indicated that the conference was not a one time
gathering, but rather first in a series of conferences that he hoped
would follow. Why this initiative is important?
The initiative is a major shift in thinking in the context of Chitral.
The forum provides a venue as well as opportunity to share contesting
and converging views, negotiating different perspectives and preferences
with open mind and mutual respect. This shift in thinking is significant
because of its potential to result in a shared vision for development.
There is another dimension to this paradigmatic shift and that is the
burgeoning confidence that Chitralis working together can develop a
structural capacity to work together with a common goal while keeping
their individual identities and affiliations intact.
It appears that the conference was preoccupied by the prospects of
infrastructural development issues like hydro power generation to
produce enough electricity to meet the needs of the population,
improvement of road network as well as aerial link with Khorog, the
capital town of the autonomous southern region of Tajikistan to create
tourism based employment opportunities and developing legal framework to
protect the local vulnerable population from dispossession of their land
by way of selling to the rich down country entrepreneurs. Understandably
the infrastructural aspect of the development is important and urgent
given that Chitral soon will be connected permanently with the rest of
the country through the all weather road link Lawari Tunnel and will
hopefully generate increasing economic activities in Chitral, which if
managed well will increase business and employment opportunities for the
local people.
The infrastructural development is critical, but cannot make much
difference if other aspects of development are neglected. For example
social areas such as education, health and business opportunities as
well as control of potential local natural resources both in their
excavation rights and investment of revenues generated through district
levies into development programs. For example, during 1990s trade of
precious stones and animal stocks from Badakhshan of Afghanistan flowed
in enormous volume through Chitral reaching the major cities of
Pakistan. There were checkpoints to collect taxes on these commercial
items and the amount collected must have reached in millions of rupees,
but no one has ever raised the question as to where and how this
district revenue was used and what development project was completed.
Did the money go to provincial coffer and spent elsewhere or collected
and used at the district level?
I believe the most important aspect of development is quality education.
What is the point to built additional hydro power stations if the
engineers, technicians, overseers and people of expertise in other areas
have to come from outside of Chitral or handed over to unskilled or half
skilled local individuals? In both situations, development is not
sustainable. Similarly in all other spheres of development, Chitral
needs skilled and competent human resource to ensure its long term
sustainable development. The first step then should be to focus on the
existing malaises and develop collective strategies to address them. One
of these malaises is highlighted in the most recent editorial of Chitral
News in which lack of trust in the system by the young generation
ensuing from lack of fairness is rampant. It suggests that “something
drastic needs to be done to restore the faith of the new generation in
the social justice administration.” Demanding bribe, nepotism,
unjustifiable recommendation (sirarish) and other type of unacceptable
pressures used in hiring are the causes, according to the editorial, for
the erosion of trust in the system. How ironic it is that our teachers,
preachers and scholars conveniently refer to the Prophet Muhammad, peace
be upon him, as saying: “He who offers bribe and he who accepts bribe
both will go to hell.” According to this saying of the Prophet no one
involved in the process should even hope to escape the hell.
There is another dimension to the problem. Why and when an educated
person becomes dependent on the debasing favor (sifarish) of someone in
the system? It is when his/her academic qualifications do not represent
the quality of knowledge that is sought after or the competencies that
are valued. Who should be blamed for this malaise? The problem lies in
the very process of education. The administrators, teachers, parents,
politicians all are responsible for the abysmal low quality of
education. Take for example cheating in examinations. It is not only
students who cheat, the invigilators and administrators of examinations
who help students to cheat, teachers who make connections with the
invigilators to help their students to cheat and parents who go out of
their way to bribe to help their children cheat in examinations.
Politicians are particularly active in pressurizing the bureaucrats to
appoint those who they recommend for hiring not that their candidates
are the best but to achieve their political goals. In other words,
mediocrity breeds mediocrity. It is hard to expect that a genuine
development would be possible without improvement the quality of
education, particularly at a time when the world is rapidly moving to
become a knowledge society.
Thus, the first resolution of the conference I would have expected to
come out of this first of the series was an agreed upon set of guiding
principles which would provide a theoretical and ethical framework to
guide the development initiatives whether creating structures or
enacting protective legal frameworks or developing programs. For
example, negotiation as a way of resolving differences, collective
action against malpractices such as accepting bribes, cheating and use
of pressure and unprofessional recommendation for employment and so on.
The second step should be to prepare a document with details of current
and prospective development issues. For example, one area which is in my
opinion is critical for development is to take measures to protect the
vulnerable youths of Chitral from coming under the influence of drugs,
the most damaging malaise of the modern society. With opening of the
Lawari Tunnel, there is a serious risk of increasing drug trafficking
into and within Chitral which can paralyze this very precious national
asset. If we loose our youths we will loose everything.
Finally, the conference in its resolution has suggested is to set up a
Chitral Development Forum which is great. I suggest that it’s most
important task is to prepare a detailed policy document with clear
articulation of ethical principles and values to inform any development
initiative, clear statement of policies to be followed including legal
and working relationships among the stake holders. This will be a
document of commitment to adhere and apply by all parties. The document
should also spell out as to how strike a balance between individual
responsibilities of the institutions and collective responsibilities as
member of the development forum. One key policy item should be to ensure
that all government departments and non-government development
institutions have clear understanding of and respect for the working
relationships. Furthermore, it must be a policy decision that no
development project and program initiated within Chitral and supported
by local communities be opposed or resisted on political, religious or
ethnic basis as it has happened in the past and continues to some extent
until today.
The Chitral News Chief Editor is commended for hosting the conference
and all conference participants also deserve our appreciation for rising
above individual differences and sharing views to develop a common
vision for the development of Chitral.
Mir Baiz Khan
Toronto, Canada
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