The arrival of James Dean and Marlon Brando in the 1950s in
films such as Rebel Without a Cause and The Wild One heralded a new kind
of cinematic idol. He was the ‘angry young man’ a brooding type with a
propensity to explode into sudden bursts of anger. His character became
even more complex by the presence of bottled-up emotional
vulnerabilities which he carried as a burden. He was a contradictory
character with the good intentions of the conventional hero but
(simultaneously) exhibiting an ambiguous ethical disposition.
The
character became an immediate draw, especially among the youth who
vented their frustrations against the sterile socio-political conformity
imposed by the American post-war establishment through him. The
cinematic angry young man symbolised the tumultuous underbelly of
suburban serenity.
In Bollywood, the cinematic angry
young man did not arrive until 1973’s Zanjeer, starring Amitabh
Bachchan. His role was of a brooding cop prone to bursts of anger which
saw him undermine the system by bypassing the apathy of the bureaucracy
and the police, and taking on the villains on his own terms.
Amitabh’s character in Zanjeer was a way for the audience to vent their
own resentments, especially against the degenerating law and order
situation and the rising political and economic corruption in India in
the 1970s.
The new-age angry young man can be seen storming TV talk-shows and political rallies, specially those covered by news channels
And even though Bollywood’s angry young man would continue
in this vein across the 1970s and early 1980s, his character in films,
no matter how menacing, intense and angry, was always about a
conscientious entity up against crooked individuals, never the state
itself.
Indian film critic and author Nikhat Kazmi, in
her book Ire In The Soul, suggests that even though the worsening
political and economic situation in India in the 1970s and the lack of
any political leader who clearly articulated the pitfalls of the
situation inspired the creation of Bollywood’s angry young man, he might
just have been created by the Indian state itself.
In
other words, popular ‘angry young man’ films were never about masses of
people rising up against state institutions. Instead, the films were
about a renegade individual getting rid of the rotten apples who were
spoiling a system that was otherwise okay. The system was never blamed.
Only individuals were.
So Amitabh’s angry-young-man
roles were weaved more as an instrument of collective catharsis, rather
than as exemplary cinematic motifs of mass revolution.
By the 1980s, however, Bollywood’s angry young man character started to
seem rather irrelevant in India’s shifting sociology, politics and
economics.
Strangely, till the late 1970s, heroes in
Pakistani cinema remained rather straight-arrowed and conventional,
apart from Nadeem’s character in the ‘socialist’ film Har Gaya Insaan
(1973).
All this began to change from 1975 onward when,
due to the Z.A. Bhutto regime’s haphazard nationalisation policies and
his growing autocratic tendencies, the country’s politics and economics
began to come under severe stress.
It was, thus, in
1979’s Maula Jat that Pakistani cinema first witnessed the creation of
its very own angry young man. He was played by the late Sultan Rahi.
Rahi’s character was quite unlike that of Bollywood’s angry-young-man.
Whereas Amitabh’s roles in this context were street-smart, brooding and
ideologically-charged, Rahi’s role was that of a man steeped in the
rugged and earthy myths of honour and revenge in rural Pakistan.
Maula Jat’s theme of an angry young man in a Punjabi village taking on
cruel feudal lords and eventually his main nemesis — the cool,
calculated psychopath Noori Nath — went down well with audiences to whom
these villains symbolised the uncaring and exploitative
‘establishment.’
When hordes of working-class
Pakistanis and peasants started venturing into cinemas to watch the
film, the Zia dictatorship stepped in and demanded the director re-cut
certain scenes of violence from the film.
According to
the film’s producer, Sarwar Bhatti, this happened because Gen Zia’s
regime — which had by then established a working relationship with
various anti-Bhutto members of Punjab’s landed elite — was alarmed by
the film’s ‘anti-establishment’ tone.
But by the late
1980s, just as Bollywood’s angry young men had become unintentional
self-parodies, so did Rahi’s roles. They became disconnected with the
changing political and economic dynamics of a transforming society.
Economic liberalism had unleashed an unprecedented streak of consumerism
in both India and Pakistan and their film heroes became either
sanitised consumer brands, or untouchable and implausible superheroes.
But
the new urban middle-class prosperity had an underbelly as well. This
time it was the frustrations of a class which had gained economic
mobility but felt that its aspirations to achieve political power were
being blocked. The manifestation of this particular frustration did not
come in the shape of a new version of the angry young man. Rather, it
did produce one, just not on the silver screen, but on the political
podium!
The new angry young man has emerged on TV
talk-shows and in political rallies, specifically those covered by TV
news channels. Imran Khan in Pakistan and Arvind Kejriwal in India are
prime examples. They are real flesh-and-blood men (though not very
young). But as angry political entities brilliantly utilising the media,
they are largely scripted characters and acts written by the
circumstances of an urban class which wants to vent the political
frustrations which betray their economic wellbeing.
Narendra
Modi too represents the same. But instead of being cast as the angry
young man, he has been scripted (by the same class), as the new
Bollywood hero: the superman.
SHAAR-I-SHALLI: Go to the southern villages in Indian-held
Kashmir and they'll tell you stories about Burhan Wani, the Hizbul
Mujahideen militant commander who was shot by security forces in July as
he tried to escape through the back door of an isolated hideout.
They
say Wani would slip out of the forests sometimes just to visit, a
22-year-old with an AK-47 and an easy way of talking that made him so
different from earlier generations of Kashmir's insurgents.
The
villagers say he'd play cricket with village boys, and visit
orphanages. They say he'd pay for the weddings of poor young women.
In
the weeks since Wani was killed on July 8, the stories have grown into
mythology — a polite teenager who left home to become a Himalayan Robin
Hood, a powerful insurgent commander who remained a man of peace — that
it's no longer clear what is true.
But in death, Wani has
become something that India has long feared ─ a homegrown militant
openly lionised across the embattled region, a powerful symbol against
Indian rule who has united IHK's many factions.
Today,
rock-throwing high school students paint his name on shuttered
storefronts — "Burhan our hero" — while everyone from fearsome
insurgents to moderate politicians mourn him.
In this Aug 31, 2016, photo, graffiti eulogising militant commander Burhan Wani who was killed in July is painted on the shutters of shops in downtown Srinagar, IHK. ─ AP
Wani had already rejuvenated the Hizbul Mujahideen, the
largest of IHK's militant groups, attracting dozens of new recruits with
postings on Facebook and other social media sites.
Young,
handsome and charismatic, he looked more like a college student than a
gunman. He sometimes posted photos of himself in the forests, a smile on
his face and an assault rifle in his hands. If he was more a savvy
recruiter than a menacing fighter, that only made him more popular.
But
his killing, and the public fury it set off, now threaten to give new
life to a militant movement in IHK that had withered in recent years,
reduced to just a couple hundred fighters in scattered rebel outfits.
Wani's
death sent tens of thousands of protesters into Kashmir's cities and
villages, beginning a cycle of protest-and-crackdown that has left more
than 70 civilians dead — most killed by Indian government forces — and
thousands injured. Strikes, curfews and intermittent communications
blackouts have effectively shuttered the region for more than seven
weeks.
It has also helped make the militancy, which had
once been at the extreme end of the Kashmiri independence movement, into
something mainstream.
Villagers, who had learned long
ago to hide any sympathy they felt for fighters, now speak of them
openly with reverence and warmth.
Wani has become the face of the militants' cause.
"He
was a good man, a gentle man," said Abdul Majeed, a farmer and elder in
the village of Shaar-i-Shalli. "That's why people cared about him."
Late
one night in mid-August, Indian soldiers forced their way into dozens
of homes in Shaar-i-Shalli, driving dozens of men into the town square.
Over the next five hours, they beat the men so brutally that one villager died and a general was forced to apologise.
The soldiers, military officials later said, were offended that village elders had not wanted to meet with them.
An Indian paramilitary soldier walks past graffiti — demanding freedom "Azadi" — on a wall in Srinagar. ─ AP
On a recent morning, Majeed and more than a dozen other
men from the village crowded into the home of the dead man — Shabir
Ahmed Mangoo had been a literature teacher at a nearby college, and his
wife had just had their first baby — to talk about what had happened.
A
scowling young man also named Shabir Ahmed (many men in the village
share the same name) suddenly interrupted Majeed. He had jet black hair
and a long beard, and could barely control his fury.
"People
used to be afraid to say that they support the militants. But with the
death of Burhan we have overcome that fear," he said.
Militants have been fighting since the late 1980s for independence for IHK.
At
its height, in the 1990s and early 2000s, a seemingly never-ending
series of bloody insurgent attacks and brutal crackdowns by Indian
security forces had given IHK the feel of an occupied state, a place of
informers, torture centres and soldiers on nearly every corner.
The
attacks of Sept 11, 2001, and subsequent United States pressure on
Pakistan to rein in militants based there, were a major setback for the
insurgent movement.
Indian security forces largely
crushed the militancy after that, though popular demands for "azadi" —
freedom — remained deeply ingrained in Kashmiri culture.
In
the last decade the calls for freedom have shifted to unarmed
uprisings, with tens of thousands of civilians repeatedly taking to the
streets to protest Indian rule, often leading to street battles between
rock-throwing residents and Indian troops.
Immense protests, some lasting for months, shook Kashmir in 2008 and 2010.
Today's
IHK is an often-contradictory place where bloody clashes mingle with
skyrocketing real estate prices and increasing wealth (fed, in part, by
Kashmiris working elsewhere in India or abroad).
It's a
place where you can buy high-end electronics or go shopping at
Babelicious Fashions, but where you rarely go more than a few minutes
without passing a heavily armed soldier or an armoured military vehicle.
Increasingly, many Kashmiris see the recent uprisings as unsuccessful.
Wani attracted dozens of new recruits with postings on Facebook and other social media sites. After his death, the medium allows his supporters to continue his story. ─ AP
"In 2008 there were nonviolent protests, and no change.
Then after the 2010 protests what happened? Nothing at all," said a
young protest leader who identified himself only as Mohammed, and who
hinted at ties to Hizbul Mujahideen, saying he could find a Hizbul
fighter "in a few minutes" if he wanted.
"This generation grew up with the idea of nonviolence, no guns. But we got nothing" from that, he continued.
"What can we do but take up the gun?"
While
Wani's killing sparked the current wave of unrest, it has also been fed
by widespread unemployment, especially among young people, and
political frustration.
Most Muslim Kashmiris have been
deeply distrustful of state politics since 2014, when a local political
party vaulted itself to power by forming an alliance with the
Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has long advocated
a hard-line response to any call for increased Kashmiri autonomy.
The
latest protests, and the open support for insurgents, deeply worry
India's security establishment, which can no longer say the militant
movement is a Pakistani creation.
The uprising has also
gone on far longer than security officials expected. While most hope it
will begin to fade after Eidul Azha, some worry it could last until the
winter cold hits the region in November or December.
A
high-ranking Indian security official, speaking on condition of
anonymity in order to talk openly, worries that the brutality of India's
clampdowns, and its ineptness with such basic concerns as traffic
enforcement and criminal investigations, have left Kashmiris with no
trust at all in the government.
Instead, the public ends up glorifying men like Wani, and the stone-throwing teenagers.
They
are young men with nicknames like "Bunker," for his courage in
attacking armoured cars, which are often called bunkers, or "Discovery,"
who acts as a scout for stone-throwers.
"This generation, it's like gunpowder ready to explode," the official said.
"When you make boys like this into heroes, then you have a big problem."
IF Pakistan has evidence that the Indian intelligence agency
RAW acted in cahoots with its Afghan counterpart NDS to plan and
execute the Quetta atrocity then the sooner New Delhi is confronted with
this the better.
The offices of the national security
advisers may be appropriate for this purpose as Pakistan’s Nasser
Janjua, former corps commander in Quetta, is said to have developed an
excellent rapport with India’s Ajit Doval, former head of RAW, over a
cigarette break during one of their meetings in Bangkok when the two
advisers stepped outside as their aides remained in the conference room.
The two have been in regular contact since.
Although
Pakistan has prepared a dossier reportedly chronicling Indian
involvement in terrorist incidents in Pakistan and even presented this
to the UN secretary general, nobody seems to have taken much notice of
this damning evidence internationally.
You are right. I
haven’t seen this dossier to ascertain if it is indeed damning but
surely it must be. With its credibility already in question, the country
would not submit anything other than an ironclad case against its rival
to the UN secretary general.
So, while Pakistan raises
the issue bilaterally with India and also at multilateral institutions
in the hope that its efforts will bear fruit one day, should it not also
focus on other areas so the challenge is addressed in a more holistic
manner?
The situation is so critical that a multipronged
effort to combat terrorism, and the underlying radicalisation which
contributes to it, is imperative if we wish to give ourselves half a
chance of overcoming what is often described as an existential threat.
While Pakistan raises its concerns about RAW’s alleged involvement
in terrorism, it should also be looking at a more holistic solution.
One of the first steps that needs to be taken is to clearly
tell the Afghan Taliban shura believed to be based in Quetta that unless
its fighters decimate the camps of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan on
Afghan soil where, security officials believe, all attacks on Pakistan
originate, they will not be afforded the same level of protection as in
the past. (This protection, too, should be contingent on their not using
Pakistani territory to launch attacks inside Afghanistan.)
We
hear often enough that the Afghan Taliban now control large swathes of
territory inside their country and strike even Kabul at will. Since they
have had many bases in Fata and the other side of the Durand Line, it
is clear that they can take out Mullah Radio and his cronies if they do
not consider them their allies.
In addition, the
intelligence agencies must ensure that jihadist groups operating in the
country cease their activities forthwith. Unfortunately, the state
believes that organisations such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), or
Jamaatud Dawa as it is called now, Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and the
Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan, always act in the best interest of the country
and are its second line of defence. It should be clear to the security
apparatus that attempts at ‘mainstreaming’ such groups that claim to be
patriotic, and inserting them in areas, such as Balochistan and parts of
Sindh, where there is discontent among the population, will fail, even
backfire, in the long term.
One need only turn the clock
back a little over 10 years to remind the national security policy
architects of the consequences of such a folly. It was a mere 10 to 12
years ago when the corps commanders of the Musharraf-led army were being
garlanded as friends in Fata after concluding peace agreements with
Taliban leaders.
Each of these leaders and groups would
eventually turn on the state, necessitating military action which, in
turn, would lead to the loss of several thousands of our valiant
soldiers. In addition, this folly has caused thousands of casualties, in
high five figures, of civilians whether they were praying in mosques,
relaxing in parks, waiting at a bus stop, or studying in school. Neither
were the politicians spared, nor did the intelligentsia get a respite
as the merchants of terror ran amok.
All jihadist groups
share an ideological affinity and it is generally a matter of time
before they opt for the same path leading to their common goal. Pakistan
cannot assume that one group is different from the other just because
its actions are not hurting the country at a given point.
I
have heard a security official expressing admiration for Jamaatud Dawa
chief Hafiz Saeed and his activists because, according to him, they have
so far played a monumental role in combating the militant Islamic State
group in Pakistan.
This may well be true but fighting
evil terrorist groups is not a task a sensible nation outsources to a
proxy non-state entity. I say this knowing very well how patriotic our
security services believe Hafiz Saeed and his followers to be.
But
it is amazing how they forget that this very group mourned the killing
of Osama bin Laden and still hail him as a hero; this when Bin Laden and
his cohorts waged a war against the state of Pakistan and almost
assassinated its military ruler.
LeT’s actions were also
responsible for bringing the subcontinent almost to the point of a
nuclear confrontation with their callous attack on civilians in Mumbai; a
similar horror had been averted just years earlier when JeM attacked
the Indian parliament in New Delhi.
If these acts were
sanctioned by the state, God help us. But I believe that Pakistan was
equally taken aback by these attacks especially since it didn’t seem to
have a contingency plan in place to deal with possible repercussions.
Can
we afford to just blame India and sit back and relax? I think not. We
have to take the jihadi bull by the horns and defeat radical thought in
order to root out terrorism. I would only be optimistic if there were
signs of this happening.
JAVED and Hamid were neighbours and grew up together. They
were the same age; their fathers — one an engineer, the other an
administrative assistant — worked for the same government department.
Both started school in the early 1970s. Javed’s parents decided to send
him to an English-medium missionary school while Hamid was sent to a
public-sector school.
The quality of education at
Javed’s school, at a cost that was only slightly higher, was much
better. Javed did his O-level and then was lucky enough to get a
scholarship to study abroad. He is now one of the leading bankers in the
country. Hamid did well in his matriculation and FSc examinations,
studied engineering and is now working as a senior manager in a
multinational company. Both have done well and moved up the
socioeconomic ladder.
This shows that quality education
for their children was within the grasp of middle-income parents, and
with some hard work and luck, it could provide social and economic
mobility. This is one of the basic goals of making education available
to all and with some notion of merit. Though education was not available
to all children, the cost in absolute terms of even high-quality
education was not too steep. The difference in cost and quality of
education between various educational providers was not very large.
The
last three decades have altogether changed the educational landscape in
Pakistan. Tuition and other fees of top schools have increased
substantially. Some of the top schools now charge each student more than
Rs35,000 as tuition fee per month. They have significant other charges
as well. Even the lower end of elite schools are now charging around
Rs15,000 per child per month as tuition fee. If a family has two to
three children, they are looking at a minimum of Rs100,000 for enrolment
in the lower tier elite schools (the cost includes tuitions and other
fees, books, transport, sports). Expenses for the top elite schools
would be at least two to three times as much.
An elite English-medium school student does not have much in common with a madressah-going child.
Getting children after-school coaching, usually referred to
as tuition, is also very common amongst urban families. These, at the
higher end, cost another Rs8,000-odd per child every month. Having
children and getting them educated at good private schools is an
expensive proposition.
Government schools are ‘free’ in
the sense that they do not charge tuition fee formally. And some
provincial governments also provide school books. But the cost of
transportation and other expenses are still incurred by the parents. The
cost each month per child in this case should not be more than Rs4,000
or so. Low- and middle-fee private schools charge anywhere between a few
hundred to a few thousand rupees every month.
The poor
and even middle-income groups cannot afford to send their children to
moderate- and high-fee private schools. Access to schooling, thus, is
not based on merit. Schools that charge high fees in general also offer
better standards. The quality of studies at government and low-fee
private schools is overall quite poor.
Access
differentials, based on wealth and not merit, create subsequent social
and economic differences and these become more entrenched generation
after generation. Rich people’s children, talented or not, are well
supported by their parents, go to good schools, get a sound education
and training and are able to get a decent job or a good break in
business. Children born to a poor household go to poor-quality schools,
do not pick up the ‘right’ accent or receive the right education, and
end up, even if they are talented and complete their education, with a
relatively poor job and have discouraging career prospects. More likely,
the poor person’s child will drop out of school and never finish his or
her schooling.
To all this add the differences in access
to schools and schooling quality based on medium of instruction,
curriculum and textbooks, rural-urban differences, provincial
differences, gender, disability and marginalisation, and you have a
picture of an extremely undulating educational landscape.
We
are seeing results from a landscape that reflects increasing
inequality, lack of socioeconomic mobility for the poor and even
middle-income groups and increasing fragmentation of the polity in
Pakistan. A child who goes to an elite English-medium school does not
have anything in common, in terms of experience, worldview, and even
exposure, with a child who goes to a madressah, or with one who goes to a
government or low-fee private school.
The child from the
elite school follows a different curriculum, has different books, talks
a different language, refers to a different culture when looking for a
reference, appears for different examinations (O- or A-levels, American
high school or IB) and looks to a different world for access to higher
education and even jobs.
How can all these children be
citizens of the same country? How can they share the same vision for
their future and for the future of their country? How can they talk to
each other, empathise with each other and understand each other’s points
of view? How can they think that what happened to them was fair and not
blame the other for what happened to them? They cannot. And given the
system, they should not as well. We are, by design, creating solitudes.
One
of the purposes of education is to provide an opportunity for
socioeconomic mobility. It is supposed to level the playing field for
the haves and the have-nots. Another purpose is to develop a common
experience for everyone to create effective citizenship. Our education
system is miserably failing on both these counts. Merit has little to do
with access to quality education. And a very divided and differentiated
system is producing children who do not even know the world in which
the other children live. And we expect a common future?
The
writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Development and
Economic Alternatives and an associate professor of economics at Lums,
Lahore.
LOS ANGELES: "Suicide Squad" smashed records, scoring a
colossal $135.1 million debut despite suffering some of the worst
reviews of the year.
That sets a new high-water mark for an August launch, lapping
"Guardians of the Galaxy's" $94.3 million bow. It also ranks as a new
personal best for star Will Smith, trumping "I Am Legend's" $77.2
million debut in 2007.
The action spectacle is also resonating with foreign crowds. "Suicide
Squad" earned $132 million overseas from 57 territories, bringing its
global total to more than $267 million.
"It bested anything that we could have expected," said Jeff
Goldstein, Warner Bros. distribution executive vice president. "The
marketing campaign was brilliant and the performances by the cast,
starting with Will Smith, Margot Robbie, and Jared Leto were just
extraordinary. They're fun and wicked and fans enjoy it."
"Suicide Squad" has been one of the most hotly anticipated films of
the summer. Buzz on the film has built steadily since Warner Bros.
released a teaser trailer at last year's Comic-Con that highlighted
Jared Leto's grill-sporting Joker and Margot Robbie looking demented in
pigtails as Harley Quinn. However, the studio was caught off guard by
the fusillade of withering reviews and their were concerns that the poor
reception would dampen the opening numbers.
And boy were those reviews awful. The Wall Street Journal's Joe
Morgenstern called the film "...an all-out attack on the whole idea of
entertainment," New York's David Edelstein branded it "the worst of the
worst," and MTV's Amy Nicholson dismissed the picture as "two hours of
padding."
Audiences appeared to like the film better than critics, handing the
film a B+ CinemaScore. Younger consumers appear to like the film better
than older moviegoers, with audiences under the age of 18 giving it an A
rating. The question is will "Suicide Squad" show some endurance?
"There's a major disconnect with between what the critics are saying and what audiences are seeing," said Goldstein.
"Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice," the previous entry in DC
Comic's series of interconnected superhero films, was also a critical
piñata. It managed to overcome the bad notices to debut to $166 million,
but the poor word-of-mouth caught up to the film in its second weekend,
pushing receipts down by nearly 70%.
There are signs the hostile reviews are already hobbling "Suicide
Squad." The film dropped sharply on Saturday, falling 41% from its
Friday numbers, although it should be said that those grosses include
Thursday pre-show results.
The studio has a lot riding on "Suicide Squad." It spent $175 million
making the picture, including tens of millions on reshoots. But the
cost isn't the only concern. DC is struggling to generate the same level
of excitement for its stable of Batman, Superman, and other Justice
League fixtures that Marvel has managed to stoke for its movies about
costumed avengers. It needs more of its films to be beloved as well as
financially successful.
Production on the film was reportedly rushed with writer and director
David Ayer having less than two months to turn a script around. The
film centers on a team of super villains who are recruited for a black
ops mission by the U.S. government.
Men accounted for 54% of "Suicide Squad's" opening weekend audience,
with more than half of the audience clocking in under the age of 25.
Warner Bros. released the film across 4,255 locations. Imax accounted
for 381 of those venues, and the big screen company comprised $11
million of the first weekend gross.
The weekend's other new release, EuropaCorp's "Nine Lives," died a
quick death. The story of a ruthless executive (Kevin Spacey) who gets
transformed into a cat, coughed up $6.5 million, and managed to score
even worse reviews than "Suicide Squad." Spacey barely promoted the
movie, which was the brainchild of former EuropaCorp CEO Christophe
Lambert, who originally envisioned the film as a high-concept comedy
before repositioning it as a family film. Ousted from the company last
February, Lambert died of lung cancer in May. He was 51 years old. "Nine
Lives" cost just over $30 million to make.
Last weekend's champ, "Universal's Jason Bourne," dropped 62% in its
second frame, topping out at $22 million. That was strong enough for a
second place finish and brings the spy sequels domestic haul to $103.4
million.
STX Entertainment's "Bad Moms" snagged third place in its second
weekend, picking up $14.2 million. The raunchy comedy about a group of
mothers who rebel against pressures to be perfect parents has made $51
million since opening, a healthy return on its $20 million budget.
Universal's "The Secret Life of Pets" nabbed fourth place with $11.6
million. The family comedy is one of the year's biggest hits, having
made $319.6 million during its run. Paramount's "Star Trek Beyond"
rounded out the top five, earning $10.2 million to push its stateside
gross to $127.9 million after three weeks.
Checkpoint Software Technologies and its
team of researchers have discovered a set of four vulnerabilities that
could potentially give attacker access to a phone's data in tens of
millions of Android devices.
The vulnerabilities, known
as QuadRooter, were discovered while looking at software which operates
on chipsets made by US firm Qualcomm.
Qualcomm is a US telecommunications equipment company and controls 65 per cent of the LTE modem baseband market.
The
defect was discovered in software that deals with graphics and in code
which communicates information between chipset components. Michael
Shaulov, head of mobility product management at Checkpoint, says that
the problems were revealed after a six month effort to reverse engineer
Qalcomm's code.
The bugs in the software can easily be triggered using an app, which would go by undetected during installation.
Affected
devices include handsets such as Samsung Galaxy S7, Samsung S7 Edge,
Google Nexus 5X, Nexus 6, Nexus 6P, LG G4, LG G5, LG V10, OnePlus One,
OnePlus 2, OnePlus 3 and many more.
In response to the
information provided by Checkpoint, Qaulcomm has created software
patches and has also started manufacturing chipsets with the bug-free
version. The patches have also been distributed to phone makers and
operators. However, there are no clear figures on how many phones have
been updated.
Checkpoint has created a free app called QuadRooter Scanner, which checks if your phone is at risk.
While there is no current evidence of these vulnerabilities being used, Shaulov says that its only a matter of time.
"It's always a race as to who finds the bug first, whether it's the good guys or the bad."
In profile: Sheops, TEDdict and WonderTree – the three Pakistani start-ups who made it to the GES this year.
This year, as they have done consistently
since 2010/11, a number of Pakistani start-ups will participate in the
Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) to be held in Silicon Valley. They
will also be able to pitch to investors at the Global Innovation through
Science and Technology (GIST) event. Doing so is nowhere as easy as it
sounds; GES and GIST are highly prestigious tech events and hard to get
into; only 1,000 participants from all over the world may attend and a
mere 15 are invited to pitch.
I met three of the
entries from Pakistan, and only one somewhat resembled the entrepreneur
stereotype of 20-something males with messenger bags slung across their
chest. The others? Well, nothing says ‘Pakistani tech entrepreneur’
better than a 38-year-old mother of two, right? Or a trio of CEOs who
have never been to school, and of whom, only one can sign legal papers
because the other two are underage. No doubt about it, this is one
eclectic bunch.
Sheops
This women-only marketplace happened as a result of a stolen
mobile phone. “I went on an online classifieds space to buy a temporary
replacement phone and the usual began to happen: crank calls,
‘frandship’ requests, solicitations. It was so irritating because this
was such a minor purchase – surely I should not have to ask my husband
to handle it for me?” questions founder Nadia Gangjee. That was when she
decided to create a harassment-free environment where women could buy
and sell from each other. She started with a WhatsApp group of friends
who put up perfumes they weren’t using, clothes made for exhibitions,
even their kids’ ‘pre-loved’ furniture. In a week the group hit its
limit; in 12 days she was running three groups.
Nadia Gangjee, Founder, Sheops
To handle the rapidly increasing membership, Gangjee
moved the groups to a closed community on Facebook where only women were
allowed, but as before, the group grew too big, too fast and issues
began creeping up. “People would cheat or not honour orders so I decided
to make a web platform that I could control.”
Her
first attempt was a disaster because she was scammed out of ownership of
domains and source code for her custom-coded website by her
then-business partner. However, with the support of The Nest I/O she
rebuilt her community of women and started a new site. After incubation
she was introduced to Arpatech, which signed on to invest after a single
45-minute meeting.
How it works:
Unlike regular marketplaces, Sheops is limited to women. “She operates,
she shops, she opts, Sheops,” says Gangjee. Prospective members are
vetted to ensure they are not men or using fake accounts, because apart
from the harassment issue, in certain cases women don’t want to buy from
men, or have men involved in the transaction. “We offer public stores,
which can be viewed by anyone, and private stores which are restricted
to members.”
Sheops offers integrated logistics and
payment systems to streamline the shopping process. When someone puts in
a purchase request for the first time, Sheops representatives call to
verify that it is a genuine buyer. A Sheops delivery person picks up the
product from the seller, takes it to the buyer and brings the payment
to the office. Every two weeks Sheops transfers payment to the seller.
“We pick, ship and deliver,” says Gangjee. “The seller has to do
nothing.”
Having only recently launched, the start-up is
not earning anything other than commissions on sales, which are kept to
either a percentage or a cap if the percentage value exceeds Rs 2,000,
but Gangjee is positive ad revenue will start coming in soon.
Why Sheops is going to GES:
One might wonder what is so special about a shopping portal that it
would get a place at GES. In Gangjee’s view it is “because it is not
about becoming a billion-dollar business; it is about giving women who
cook, craft and create an outlet to sell because they can’t go and ask
the local shopkeeper to stock their products. Sheops is going because
Sheops is empowering.”
TEDdict
Excitable siblings who chat at the speed of a runaway train,
Ayesha Babur, 19, Abdullah Babur, 17, and Asadullah Babur, 15, have
been homeschooled all their lives. “We didn’t follow a curriculum. We
read books, went to expos and played sports. If a problem needed to be
solved, we figured it out ourselves,” says Ayesha, pointing out that all
three recently sat for O Level exams.
Homeschooling
meant they paid more attention to conceptual learning compared to peers
who studied in regimented classrooms. “We analysed how the brain
learns,” says Abdullah. “We did a lot of research on international
education systems, emailed professors, and investigated different
education models.”
(L to R): Asadullah Babur, Abdullah Babur, Ayesha Babur, Founders, TEDdict.
“And because we wanted to make learning addictive,” says
Asadullah, “we came up with TEDdict, for the technology, entertainment,
design addict.”
How it works: “Most
learning websites focus on teacher-to-student interaction,” says Ayesha,
noting that in real life, kids often get together for group studies to
learn from each other rather than from a teacher.
Being a
gamified environment, there is also an element of competition, which
Asadullah says is the reason games like Farmville are so successful. “We
use the coin system,” he explains. Every month members receive a
certain number of coins which can be exchanged for lessons, meaning
exchange isn’t strictly reciprocal.
“I will teach you
maths, you teach him physics, he teaches me English,” says Ayesha.
“TEDdies don’t barter, they trade lessons for coins. The more help you
give, the more coins you get.”
An additional gaming
aspect is the use of leaderboards to show ratings. “When you help
someone your ratings on the public leaderboard rise,” says Ayesha.
“That’s motivation to do more.”
Revenue is generated
by issuing progress reports. “Parents and teachers like knowing how
well their kids are learning or where they need more help,” says
Abdullah. “For between one and three dollars, they can get a detailed
analytics report that shows exactly where their child stands.”
Why TEDdict is going to GES:
Because “there are hardly any peer-to-peer learning portals,” says
Abdullah. Ayesha adds that “meta-learning, or learning about learning is
still in experimental stages. Edmodo and Google Plus are kind-of,
sort-of the closest you can get to TEDdict.”
WonderTree
As young men who put off finding jobs in order to develop a
start-up, two of them faced quite a few challenges from their families.
Yet, it was a family challenge that generated the idea in the first
place.
“My older brother is a special-needs person,”
says Muhammad Usman, 23, Chief Technical Officer, WonderTree. “One day I
saw him playing a car game on the console and he was better at it than I
was – so I figured why not turn it into a therapy aid.”
The
idea won the Karachi Grand Innovation Challenge held by Pakistan
Innovation Foundation, Alif Ailaan and I Am Karachi. Soon after Usman
and the original developing team graduated from university; two went
their separate ways while Usman and Ahmed Bukhari, 24, Chief of Research
& Development and Analytics, WonderTree, came to The Nest I/O.
(L to R): Muhammad Usman, Muhammad Waqas, Ahmed Bukhari, Founders, WonderTree.
Usman’s neighbour, Muhammad Waqas, 28, came on board as
Chief of Marketing and Strategy. “I had my own digital marketing agency
and I planned to carry on with that as well; but one month in I closed
shop and turned all my attention to WonderTree.”
How it works:
As a therapy aid, WonderTree games help players develop hand-eye
coordination, physical movement, reflexes, mirroring, attention
retention and decision making. To play, users must download the game for
a monthly subscription fee and have a laptop, television and kinect
device.
The team works with a panel of physiotherapists,
the Institute of Professional Psychology (IPP), Karachi Vocational
Trust (KVT), and Network of Organizations Working with People with
Disabilities, Pakistan (NOWPDP) to develop the games. “Initially we were
quite haphazard,” says Waqas. “Then one of our mentors, Adil Moosajee,
advised us to set up a board that we could consult regularly. That
really helped.”
In an environment where most games are
available for free, WonderTree is confident their subscription model
will work. “A package costs $25 a month,” says Waqas. “For Pakistan,
that’s 50% less than what you would pay to a therapist annually. From an
international perspective, research shows a special-needs child
requires $10,000 to 30,000 a year. On our platform the top cap is
$1,000.”
Why WonderTree is going to GIST:
To qualify for GIST a start-up must be able to impact a whole economy
and be globally implementable. On that basis (and because according to
their research there are only two other companies in the world that
provide a similar product) WonderTree made it through the first round
against 1,074 entries. In the second round they had to come up with as
many votes as possible to make it to the top 15.
“At
first we shared posts to get the word out. We garnered 500 votes. The
other start-ups were at 5,000 and 10,000 votes. So we changed tactics;
we set up teams in several universities and instead of asking people to
vote for us, we asked permission to use their email address so we could
vote on their behalf.” Several days of intense voting later they landed
in the top 10 and were subsequently invited to present to Silicon Valley
investors for funding.
As each start-up team speaks
about their experiences with The Nest I/O, it becomes clear that the
most valued support received was not the (admittedly important) free
space and free internet; it was the mentors, the guidance and the
wholehearted sharing of knowledge.
“A lot of people
dissed Usman’s idea at first,” says Waqas. “But here we found selfless
encouragement from people who had nothing to gain in return from us.”
Gangjee
points out that she only discovered her ex-business partner’s scam
after she came to The Nest I/O and began to understand how websites
worked.
As for the TEDdict kids, through The Nest I/O
they went to Sri Lanka and won silver at the Asia Pacific ICT Alliance
(APICTA) Awards. Now they are going to the heart and soul of tech
development in Silicon Valley. With unabashed enthusiasm only teens are
capable of, they cheer, “It’s like we hit the lottery!”
UPDATE:
The winners of GIST Tech-1 Pitch, Start-up Stage, were announced on
June 23 and 24, 2016. WonderTree placed third to win $3,000. First place
was won by Monkey Junior, Vietnam, for an interactive reading
application. Second place went to HiGi Energy, Malaysia, for converting
invasive water hyacinth and agricultural waste into an environmentally
friendly, smoke free cooking fuel.
Qaim Ali Shah's resignation as Sindh chief minister led to a series of hagiographic articles focusing on his personal habits and idiosyncrasies.
Presumably
written to cast him in a humane light, the pieces, in my opinion, lack
any insight on the overall performance of the ex-CM. His tenure should
be properly analysed as it was a unique one in several ways.
His
departure brought to a close the longest single tenure of a chief
minister the province has witnessed. But his occupancy was unique not
just for its longevity. Qaim Ali Shah is Sindh's first CM to complete a
full term (April 2008- March 2013), and had the luxury of his party’s
support at the centre during his tenure.
The restructured and improved seventh National Financial Commission (NFC) Award, 18th amendment
and dismantling of the local government system gave him more authority
than previous chief ministers and perhaps those after him.
He
was fully responsible for the areas of education, healthcare,
development, law and order — in short the overall running of the
province. As an independent and well-supported chief executive of the
province, he had the rare opportunity and time to make an impact.
As a tax payer, I am only interested in Qaim Ali Shah's performance, not that he is a vegetarian or had good filial relations.
History is replete with awful rulers, who had some good
qualities. Nero was devoted to the arts, while Hitler was abstemious, a
vegetarian, a teetotaler and an animal lover. Foreign correspondents
gushed about Joseph Stalin’s personal charm.
The reverse
is also true. Both Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy were said
to be womanisers, and Winston Churchill spent a small fraction of his
life sober. Yet, they were responsible for the New Deal, for winning the
Second World War, Civil Rights and the moon landing.
Given
a choice, this scribe would rather have a debauched, meat guzzling,
utterly hedonistic, but effective, public servant as opposed to a
criminally incompetent saint. So when evaluating QAS, the only yardstick
should be his performance and fulfillment of duties as CM.
And, in both aspects, he was found severely lacking.
Thar's tragedy
The biggest example can be seen in Thar. For the past few
years, most areas of the Tharparkar district have been suffering from
intense malnutrition and famine.
According to a report
by the National Commission of Human Rights (NCHR), almost 1,400
children died of malnutrition in the past two years, while a total of
2,800 children passed away due to measles and other diseases.
It
further stated that: “Thar has one district hospital, two rural health
centres and three Taluka hospitals to handle a population of 1.3 million
people.”
Yet, when the ex-CM visited famine victims
in March 2014, he gave a few speeches and then retired to the Circuit
House at Mithi to enjoy what media reports called “a wedding feast”.
At
a public talk held in April this year, Dr Shaikh Tanveer Ahmed — CEO of
developmental institution HANDS and one of the largest NGOs of the
country — said 481 children under five years of age had died from December 1, 2013 to March 14, 2015.
These
deaths did not happen at home but were reported at the District
Headquarter Hospital in Mithi, which should be equipped with basic
treatment facilities.
What made matters worse was QAS' chilling indifference towards the deaths.
In a media talk in January 2016, he said:
“If there was drought and a lack of healthcare facilities, then men and
women would also have suffered equally,” he said. He then complained
that if a child dies in a mother’s lap, the government is blamed.
Perhaps,
he was unaware of the Sindh Healthcare Commission Act, 2013 that was
passed by the Sindh Assembly under his leadership on February 24, 2014, stating
that the provincial government is responsible "for improving the
quality of healthcare services and banning quackery in the Province of
Sindh in all its forms and manifestations".
Education crisis
Article 25A of the 18th Amendment reads:
“Right to education: The state shall provide free and compulsory
education to all children of the age of five to 16 years in such manner
as may be determined by law”.
Every year, the provincial assembly of Sindh passes an educational budget running in hundreds of billions, — Rs739 billion last year — and yet Sindh faces an education crisis.
There are almost 7,000
public ghost schools in the province — the running of which costs the
state billions of rupees. The Sindh education department claims
transparency in hiring and yet neutral bodies identify between
6,000-7,000 teachers, who have been illegally appointed due to political
connections.
The Annual Status of Education Survey Report (ASER), which was published in December 2015, states
that more than a quarter of school-going children in rural Sindh are
not in school, while 20 per cent were never enrolled — the second worst
rate after Balochistan.
Almost 40 per cent of first
graders cannot read which actually comprises the highest degree of
students. The standards and enrollments drop as classes advance. 79pc of
Class 5 students cannot read sentences of Class 2 level, while
enrollments at Matric level is at 2pc.
Education is
largely a supply side problem. There is a severe shortage of functioning
schools and of the existing ones, the vast majority are for primary
education.
Moreover, education spending is not
regularised. For instance, Tharparkar has a tiny fraction of children
compared to other districts but it has the largest number of government
schools.
Most of the government-school buildings are in a
dilapidated state and missing basic facilities such as electricity,
drinking water or even boundary walls.
Government-offered
higher education has its own set of issues with several reported cases
of illegal appointments and extensions of faculty and political
interference in running of universities and degree-awarding
institutions.
Faculty and staff regularly go on strikes due to delayed salaries and other issues, leading to disruption of academics.
On
the law and order front, too, his leadership was lacking. It took an
army-led operation in Karachi to restore some semblance of normalcy.
In rural areas, besides robberies and killings, there have been regular cases of forced conversions
of minorities that has led to families from interior Sindh seeking
refuge in India. Police have been largely occupied in providing security
for politicians.
Even a cursory look at QAS' performance
screams lacklustre leadership and complacency. But his handlers and
sycophants point towards his loyalty to the PPP as a saving grace.
Loyalty to the party is meaningless to an average citizen; the only barometer is performance.
If anything these accounts only strengthen the case that he was more loyal to the party than the people he was meant to serve.
In the aftermath of his resignation, it is often stated that he did not have a free hand to deliver due to orders from the top.
Can
an octogenarian really not distinguish between good or bad? If his
hands were tied, then shouldn't he have done what any honourable man
would do: resign in protest.
Isn't that
what Mairaj Mohammad Khan — one of the founding members of the PPP — did
after developing differences with the party.
Shah's legacy is a long saga of inefficiency and ineptitude; the people of Sindh can only hope that the new CM will do better.
He will certainly be hard pressed to do any worse.
It has been over two weeks since social media star
Qandeel Baloch was killed by her brother and cousin as she slept in her
parents’ home in Multan, on July 15, 2016.
In
the days after her death there has been much debate about the role of
the media in this murder, with many laying the blame of her death
squarely on the shoulders of the media, which tirelessly covered her
titillating public stunts during her short public life.
Qandeel
shot to fame in 2014, when she released a video proposing suggestively
to politician and cricket legend Imran Khan. That video went viral and a
social media star was born.
Emboldened by the response
from a conservative nation, Qandeel moved onto more provocative promises
such as ‘strip dancing’ for the Pakistani cricket team if they won
against India. The girl from a lower middle-class family from Dera Ghazi
Khan soon developed a big following with an audience, that may not have
approved of her, but which waited eagerly for the next titillating
offering from her.
She displayed rare media savvy in the
way she released videos that were destined to go viral from the moment
they were uploaded on social media. In an environment where the lines
between Pakistan’s mainstream and sensationalist media seem to have been
irretrievably blurred, Qandeel was soon invited to popular talk shows
and even shows that discussed current affairs on a regular basis.
It
is still unclear whether Qandeel’s death qualifies as honour killing.
Her murder could well have been the result of a squabble with her
drug-addicted brother Waseem Azeem — who she was supporting — over
money. However if we were to take her brother’s confession to the police
at face value, it raises several questions about the narrative that the
mainstream media had shaped for Qandeel Baloch.
Widely
portrayed during her short public life as a promiscuous, salacious
woman, Qandeel’s provocative proposal to Imran Khan, her promises to
‘strip dance’ and her rendezvous with government cleric Mufti Abdul
Qavi, were covered tirelessly by the mainstream media, infuriating many,
including allegedly her own brother.
She got used to a
jeering crowd that attacked her callously on social media, even
releasing a video asking her haters to unfollow her.
To
be fair, Qandeel basked in the attention the mainstream lavished on her.
It was a symbiotic relationship where she provided the latest
controversy and the media fed and fuelled it, in order to strengthen the
other symbiotic relationship it shared with its consumers, that is, you
and me.
Unfortunately, the jibes did not stop, even when
things took what should have registered as a serious turn. In the days
before her death, the media dug out Qandeel’s ex-husband to further milk
her notoriety and to fill up air time with TRP-worthy fodder.
Despite
going on air and talking about receiving death threats after the Mufti
Abdul Qavi episode and talking about being physically abused during a
short-lived marriage, the media preferred to turn a blind eye and busy
itself with propagating the narrative it had fashioned for her, by
asking her husband pointed questions designed to malign her and to pat
itself on the back for yanking out a skeleton from her closet.
With
Qandeel dead, it is time to ask whether the media can really take the
moral high ground by saying that they are merely supplying what we are
demanding? We may not approve of Qandeel’s ‘rendezvous’ with Mufti Abdul
Qavi, but we were eagerly lapping it up when the ‘news’ broke on TV and
the controversy ran ad-nauseam across our screens.
The
Qandeel-Mufti rendezvous was god-sent for the media, as it strengthened
the popular narrative it had created about her, adding several hundred
thousand eyeballs and more points to the TV channel’s TRPs.
Will
Qandeel’s death change anything? In the past the media has been blamed
for the death of other celebrities, such as Princess Diana. But little
has been done to curb the sensationalism it broadcasts so unthinkingly
and carelessly. If anything, since Princess Diana’s death and despite
much introspection by the media back then, the tabloid business around
the world has only grown.
A scroll down the average
social media newsfeed and it becomes hard to tell the difference between
the mainstream and tabloid media. Also the media’s largely self-serving
stance on public figures becomes obvious.
Will channel
heads and editors accept that they encouraged unchecked coverage of
Qandeel while she lived? Will they accept that they milked the public’s
fascination with her against their better judgment?
With
Qandeel gone, not only is it time to talk about outdated feudal customs
that she may have fallen victim to, it is also time to question the
media’s role in creating a frenzy and appetite around her, her death and
the events leading up to it.
Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, July 7th, 2016
Changing women: Moving into public space
by Mansoor Raza
The
murder of Qandeel Baloch, allegedly for the sake of male honour, is
symptomatic of a wider trend in Pakistan. Violence against women — or at
least of its reporting — is on the rise. Be it the case of young
Sumaira of Karachi or the social media star Fouzia Azeem alias Qandeel
Baloch of Multan, there is an emerging pattern: violence will be used to
deny three basic rights of women and indicators of empowerment — what
to study, where to work and with whom to marry.
The horror stories about the rise of violence against women may be
masking a complementary trend: the increasing role of women in the
public sphere
Yet despite all pressures women are actually increasingly
claiming more space for those critical decisions of their lives. The
causes of this change are interesting and even more interesting are the
indicators of the evolving status of women of Pakistan.
Let us have a look at what some of these indicators are telling us.
Numbers
As per various census reports of the Federal Bureau of
Statistics (FBS), around 48 million women were added between 1951 and
1998 (the census years). In 1951 the women population was recorded at
15.6 million where as in 1998 the women head count was approximately
63.5 million.
Between the two census periods of 1981 and
1998, 23.5 million women were added to Pakistan’s population, a number
that is greater than the actual female population reported in 1961: 20
million.
Though the per annum growth rate is slowing
down, women’s share in the total population has increased from 46.22 per
cent in 1951 to 48.05 per cent in 1998.
The population
of young females (between the ages of 15 and 24) has increased from 6.8
million to 12 million between 1981 and 1998, a growth of almost 78 per
cent between the two censuses. This gigantic addition obviously requires
adjustments in policies of state, a task which is yet to be
accomplished.
Education
Female literacy rates have also shown a tremendous increase.
There were 4.2 million literate women in 1981 while in 1998 the number
of literate women had risen to 13.8 million, an addition of 9.6 million
literate women, which translates into a per annum growth rate (PAGR) of
over 14 per cent. The percentage of female literates 10 years or older
rose from 15.60 per cent in 1981 to 32.60 per cent in 1998.
What
these statistics reveal is that the achievements of women in
educational attainment (enrolment from class one to university) over the
last 47 years (from 1947 to 1998) showed remarkable improvement. There
were only 1,335 girls enrolled in universities in 1951, while in 1998
the figure had gone up to 25,469.
In 1998, women
comprised almost 28 per cent of university students. This indicates a
demand for better utilisation of educated females in the economic
spheres as it can help reduce the dependency ratio. Of course, it also
indicates a change in the entire socio-political fabric of the Pakistani
society.
Marriage
There has been a sharp decline in the percentage of married
women. The percentage of married women with respect to the total women
population of 15 years and above dropped by 4.2 points between 1981 and
1998.
This decline was even more pronounced in the urban areas, where the percentage declined by almost 12 points.
The
average age of marriage for women has also risen, with more women
choosing to marry later, completing their education being the most often
cited reason.
In 1981 there were 78,731 divorced women
while in 1998 the figure rose to 154,343, an addition of 75,612 divorced
women. The PAGR of divorce in women was observed as 4.04 per cent while
in males it was 1.48 per cent.
Divorce also appears to
be more of an urban phenomenon in women, since the PAGR is 6.62 per cent
in urban females as compared to 3.20 in rural females. Interestingly,
despite false claims, divorce rates have actually declined since 1972.
Work
The transition from a feudal culture — with its reliance on
an agricultural modes of production, a barter system, dependence on
landholdings and the responsibility on male members to feed the entire
family, with primitive skills — to service capitalism puts more economic
pressures on women to work and become earning partners.
As a result, a high growth rate (in absolute numbers) is observed in the female labour force as compared to the male population.
In
1981 women’s share in the total labour force was only 2.14 per cent. By
1999-2000, although the overall percentage of the civilian labour force
has gone down, female participation has gone up to 6.68 per cent of the
total population of 10 and above. This shows more involvement of women
in public spheres in order to earn a livelihood.
How do
we interpret these statistics? Taken together, these changes in
demographic indicators show that the actual transition that is taking
place is in the priorities of the female population of Pakistan. The
desire for job security is slowly replacing the earlier concept of
security associated with marriage.
Aspiration for mere
literacy has been replaced, overwhelmingly, by the desire for higher
achievements in the educational field. Attire has changed, vocabulary
has transformed and the gender interaction has morphed.
Women have become increasingly more assertive about their ambitions, far more than their preceding generation.
Stuck
in residual feudal norms, the traditional mindset — with the help of
the orthodox establishment — protests against the progress made by women
but this is a failing proposition. Power is slipping away from them.
One
can think of it as the flailing, desperate attempts of a crumbling
order. Urban women through education and technology have developed
cultural linkages with globalisation that continue to dictate their
choices in life. They are unwilling to let go of whatever freedoms they
have achieved and aspire for more.
The unanswered
question is actually whether institutions are geared up to accommodate
this sea change? If they are not, in the days to come we are likely to
see more violence against women.
Figures worked out by the writer from census reports of FBS
The Brave New World Of Pakistan’s Social Media
Transgressions of social norms are seeping from the digital realm into the real world
By Hasan Zaidi
Quite
aside from the horrifying circumstances of Qandeel Baloch’s murder,
those who don’t use social media or those not particularly familiar with
it, might be forgiven for being baffled at the phenomenon that she was.
Qandeel was probably the first true female internet
celebrity in Pakistan, in that her celebrity had nothing to do with any
achievement beyond her provocative presence on social media.
There
have been other social media-aided celebrities — the ‘Eye To Eye’
singer Tahir Shah, the ‘One-Pound-Fish’ man Shahid Nazir, the camp
self-promoter on YouTube from Sialkot Awais Lovely and the
Twitter-braggart ‘Prince’ Affan bin Saqib, for example — but Qandeel was
probably the first woman to achieve fame solely through social media.
Unlike
other women who have used social media as a tool to advance their
existing careers in film, television or music, Qandeel took the opposite
route. She was reputedly a singer but her only known foray into singing
was as a contestant on Pakistan’s Pop Idol programme where she was
eliminated in the initial audition stages.
She was also
said to be a model but had never actually worked as a model in anything
until she became famous through her Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
accounts.
In fact, even her identity as ‘Qandeel Baloch’
was basically constructed through social media — which is why there was
increasing scrutiny about her origins as her notoriety grew: what her
real name was (Fouzia Azeem), whether she was even from a Baloch tribe
(she apparently wasn’t) and her marital history (an apparently abusive,
short-lived marriage that produced a child).
What set
Qandeel apart from other internet sensations in Pakistan was that she
was a flesh-and-blood woman, not simply a faceless, pretend-woman, of
which there are, of course, plenty on social media.
It
was unfathomable to a lot of Pakistanis that a real woman could be as
brazen or shameless about her sexuality publicly, because her entire
persona was built around flaunting her body, talking about sex and being
in-everyone’s face.
The comments on her Instagram feed —
which had hundreds of thousands of ‘followers’ by the time of her death
— were probably 30 per cent from voyeurs getting a kick out of this but
were overwhelmingly from those attacking her for “being a disgrace to
Pakistan and Islam.”
What’s, of course, interesting is
the fact that people would still follow her feeds or make the effort to
come to her pages only to abuse her. Her persona was so unimaginable for
a Pakistani (of course, they are used to such personas from the West or
even from India) that there was even speculation about whether she was,
in fact, originally a man who had undergone a sex change. For many,
that would have explained everything.
What’s interesting,
sociologically, for Pakistan is not that there are constructed personas
on social media — very common phenomena around the world — but how
transgressions of socially acceptable behaviour are seeping from the
digital realm into the real world and influencing how they are viewed
and debated.
This is all the more remarkable given that
internet penetration in Pakistan is still estimated at below 18 per
cent; more than 80 per cent of the country’s population does not even
have access to social media platforms.
Certainly, much of
Qandeel’s output on social media — pictures and videos of herself in
various forms of undress, thoughts about sex and sexuality, commentary
on the hypocrisy of well-known people — is still verboten on mainstream
media or even in polite company.
And yet, people were
discussing her among themselves in private gatherings around the country
and on social media itself; even television and the print media had
been forced to acknowledge her.
Of course, TV and print
referred to the content of her posts only obliquely, if at all. When
they referred to her as ‘a model’ they never clarified what exactly
people might have seen her in. Until, of course, the Mufti Qavi
brouhaha, which allowed TV to run fairly sanitised photographs of her
with the cleric and to peg her as the woman who brought Mufti Qavi down.
Incidentally,
in and of themselves, those photographs — whose ‘scandalous’ high point
was Qandeel donning Mufti Qavi’s karakuli cap — would mean nothing,
divorced from the context of Qandeel’s online persona.
There
have always been transgressive people in society — people who flout
traditional social norms — but they never had the ability to come into
contact with the huge numbers of people that social media platforms now
afford them. Had Qandeel Baloch existed in the pre-social media age, it
is more than likely that most people would never even have heard about
her.
Social media is transforming society and media in
ways that have not been studied at all in Pakistan. Consider Qandeel’s
origins and trajectory: a poor girl from a small village in the remote
and largely feudal Dera Ghazi Khan area, who goes on to become a
national and, to a certain extent, international sensation, purely on
the basis of her force of will and ability to project herself.
Irrespective
of the means employed to achieve fame, it shows the power of social
media to cross class, linguistic and ethnic barriers in today’s Pakistan
and its increasing ability to dictate what the mainstream media — and
thus the larger national population — takes notice of.
It’s a brave new world and mainstream Pakistani media is mostly playing catch-up.
KARACHI: Pakistanis bought property worth three billion
United Arab Emirates (UAE) dirhams (around Rs85bn) in Dubai during the
first half of this year, just behind Indians and Britons who plunked
down 7bn and 4bn dirhams, respectively.
In the last
two-and-a-half years, Pakistanis have invested over 18bn dirhams
(Rs512bn) in Dubai realty market, according to reports based on Dubai
Land Department appeared in the UAE media.
In 2015,
Indian nationals ranked the highest value foreigners, making property
transactions worth 20bn dirhams from 8,756 investors. Britons came in at
second with a total of 10bn dirhams worth of property transactions from
4,889 investors while Pakistanis ranked third with 8bn dirhams from
6,106 investors.
In 2014, Pakistanis were at second
position with 5,079 transactions with a total of 7.59-dirham investment.
Indians topped the list with purchase of 18.1bn dirhams worth of
property on 7,353 transactions, whereas Britons invested 9.32bn dirhams.
“Our
politicians, bureaucrats and some genuine buyers have lifted properties
in Dubai instead of local businessmen,” said Abdul Wahab Parekh, the
owner of Parekh Estate in Clifton. “Businessmen have pulled out their
money from banks after introduction of 0.3 to 0.6 per cent withholding
tax on filers and non-filers on tax returns. They have basically parked
their money abroad.”
However, property dealers in the
local market paint an uncertain future after the introduction of new
valuation rates, saying the real estate market has become inactive.
Mr
Parekh believed that after new valuation rates for property, the local
businessmen were unlikely to take the plunge and started buying property
in Dubai as the prices on that market have been in decline for more
than one year.
The new valuation rates look feasible for
the Defence Housing Authority (DHA) and Clifton, but for other areas of
Karachi the valuation rates seem overvalued, he said. “It’s surprising
that the federal government has decided the valuation rates instead of
provincial governments under the 18th Amendment.”
“The federal government cannot intervene where provincial governments are authorised to take decision,” he said.
However,
he said the property market has been very quite in terms of sale and
purchase deals since July 1 as only 15pc deals were struck which were
mutually agreed before July, but the sellers get 10-15pc less price.
However, many buyers and sellers postponed their transactions mutually.
He also claimed that about 80pc of black money found way into the real estate sector of Pakistan.
CEO
of Citi Associates in Clifton, Mohammad Shafi Jakvani, said the volume
of property transactions has shrunk and only 10-15pc deals have taken
place in DHA and Karachi Development Authority compared to the volume
before the introduction of latest finance bill.
Citing
reasons for huge price difference in official and open market prices, he
said the deputy commissioner valuation table was formed in 1986. Since
then, the market price has risen drastically. The markets saw three
bullish trend periods — first in 1993 to 1996, second in 2001 to 2005,
and third in 2011 till 2016.
The sale/purchase had become
negligible from July 2016 onwards as buyers and sellers had adopted
wait-and-see approach, especially after new valuation rates, said
Mohammad Najeeb, the owner of Nazimabad Estate in North Naziamabad. “The
new valuation rates are overvalued which may keep property buyers and
sellers in an uncertain situation for future deals.”
THE good news: he’s in second place. The bad news: he’s in
second place. Imran Khan. The man who would be prime minister. The face
that has launched a thousand dharnas.
The eternal bridesmaid.
At this point, there’s not much left to say. Everyone knows what he wants and everyone knows how desperately he wants it.
Love
it, hate it, seethe at it, be thrilled by it — whichever side of the
fence you’re on, you know exactly what he wants and you already know
what you make of it.
The man who would rule.
But
here’s the thing: he’s quite rubbish at it. End of the day, politics is
about winning. The top job. Numero uno. Becoming prime minister.
The problem is that that Khan doesn’t know how to become prime minister. And it’s got tiring. Very tiring.
Even those who know their place in the pecking order hanker for it. You can’t not. It’s in the DNA of a politician.
If
you believe you should represent, then what greater representation,
what higher aspiration than prime minister itself? So, Prime Minister
Khan isn’t fundamentally the problem.
He may go on to
become a historic disaster — if he ever gets there. More likely, he’ll
end up in the pantheon of pygmies who have occupied the office.
So,
no, Prime Minister Khan isn’t fundamentally the problem. The problem is
that that Khan doesn’t know how to become prime minister.
And it’s got tiring. Very tiring.
The
rabid partisan or the twisted mind may appreciate Imran’s
single-mindedness. He won’t give up! His goal is noble! He’s not like
the rest of them!
But, dammit, that’s not the point to this. Or it shouldn’t be.
Right now, Imran is dragging his party kicking and screaming towards another round of — what exactly? And why exactly?
Nobody
seems to know. Not even in his party. Sure, there’s the pro-agitation
lot, the ones who want to throw the kitchen sink at the N-League until
Nawaz is dislodged.
But what’s the plan here?
Because
the PTI’s got a government in KP and incumbents can assemble a crowd,
it may make sense to kick off with Peshawar-Attock.
But
just because Imran likes to yell at Nawaz from atop a shipping container
in front of a few thousand, or even tens of thousands, of folk, that
doesn’t translate into a plan.
A plan — it’s the one
thing Imran never seems to have. Energy, yes. Defiance, plenty. Zeal,
check. Message, maybe. Plan? Unhappily, never.
It is
puzzling. Strip away morality and shrug off notions of right and wrong
and you can see it for what it is: Imran has tried hard, damned hard, to
win.
He aligned with the military. He’s flung open the
party doors to electables. He panders to the bearded lot. He’s embraced
money. He takes to the streets. He’s unconstrained by political norms.
That’s fine. You’re in the game to win. But always missing with Imran is a plausible route, a path to power — a plan.
When
he aligned with the military and swept into Islamabad for his epic
dharna, it was clear what was in it for the boys, but what kind of deal
had Imran struck? Turns out a pretty shabby one.
When he
flung open the PTI’s doors to electables it made a kind of electoral
sense — but then he lets the electables and the originals savage each
other and allows the enemy to coast to victory. Over and over and over
again.
When he panders to the bearded lot, you can see
he’s trying to capture the vote to the right of the N-League that Nawaz
has moved away from — but then that alienates the core PTI chap, the
anti-corruption crusader in the city.
When he embraces
money you can see in it a pragmatic acceptance of modern politics — but
then he opens himself up to accusations of hypocrisy by relentlessly
attacking others for the same.
When he takes to the
streets you can see how the possibility of mass mobilisation panics the
government — but then he doesn’t invest in a party machine that can
churn out the crowds.
When he speaks and acts
unconstrained by political norms, you can see the non-PC stuff is lapped
up by the base — but then he goes all thin-skinned when attacked in the
same way and comes across as uncertain and too emotional for the job to
everyone else.
None of that is stuff that can’t be fixed
— if there were even a modicum of a plan. The PML-N is not invulnerable
and Nawaz is hardly the inspirational sort.
But the only plan Imran ever seems to have is to become prime minister. And that’s exactly the problem.
Good
or bad, right or wrong, the moral or immoral route, the thing that
rankles most about Imran isn’t that he tries, but how rubbish he is at
it. Every time, all the time.
The only plausible
explanation left is this: Imran is a victim of the reverse Goldilocks
effect. That he’s got enough support to sustain the belief that he can
become PM, but not anywhere near the support he needs to actually become
PM.
The reverse Goldilocks: he sees enough fervour
around him to believe that passion is the only plan he needs, but minus
an actual plan Imran can’t get the level of national fervour he needs to
sweep into office.
The good news: Imran is in second place. The bad news: Imran is in second place.
The
problem isn’t that Imran keeps trying. But politics is ultimately about
winning. And Imran, the eternal bridesmaid, doesn’t seem to know what
he really is: a loser.
Recently, an international bank wanted to fire a few people from their workplace in Karachi. As preparations were being made to carry this out, someone from the supervisor’s office leaked the information to the employees. On learning that their jobs were soon to be in peril, around 20 of them went up to the supervisor to confront him. The supervisor clarified his position by saying that the decision came from the head of the human resource department who was being “pig headed” about the entire issue.
The employees confronted the head of HR who showed ignorance about the issue and agreed to check with the supervisor instead. But by then the employees were suspicious of the HR person’s involvement in the issue based on the supervisor’s misinformation.
Since the head of the HR was a woman, says Shahzad Ahmad director of the Islamabad-based Bytes for All, they didn’t pursue the matter directly. “Instead, they took a deplorable route. They made a fake Gmail account in her name and sent sexually explicit pictures and requests to the entire office,” he added. After fighting her case for a month, the head of HR quietly resigned from her position. A week later, the supervisor fired the employees he had initially planned to.
From Qandeel Baloch to Sabeen Mahmud, women are disproportionately cyber bullied and stalked; what legal and non-legal options are available to help them combat this?
In another instance, which occurred in the Punjab, an Ahmadi girl’s fake profile on Facebook came to the fore in the beginning of 2016. “The man she was earlier in a relationship with used the fake Facebook account to spread misinformation about her relationship with him,” says Ahmad. “He created a fake account, took screenshots of their made-up conversations on Facebook and threatened to show it to her potential in-laws,” he added.
According to the director, the man wanted to ‘convert’ her with an added aim of having sexual relations with her. After debating whether to take the legal route, the family of the girl decided to mediate with the man whom they considered powerful as he boasted of having connections with religious groups that could harm the girl’s father or brother if she married another man. However, when the family asked him to marry the girl, he refused. The case is still pending as the family is thinking about whether to pay off the man off or continue speaking to him and reach another conclusion.
Similar cases were reported by Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in the beginning of 2016. According to the deputy director of the Cyber Crime Wing, Zaeem Ahmed, these had been in the loop for six months.
“Women are among the majority when it comes to cases pertaining to facing harassment on Facebook and Twitter. Eighteen cases of a similar nature were reported in 2015. Men usually don’t report such cases but are more likely to report property and online fraud. We received five such requests of property or online banking frauds reported from Karachi,” he said. However, he added that the reporting of these cases is not an issue but the fact that women don’t follow through on the cases till the end.
The FIA, which created the Cyber Crime Wing under the National Response Centre in 2007, currently faces issues when it comes to gaining user records specifically from Twitter, Gmail and Yahoo. A source said that most of the problems also stem from the fact that the officials hired to work on cybercrime cases are not aware of internet policies.
Going for the non-legal route
With the fight against cybercrime still muddled to a large extent, organisations dealing with such crime, such as Bytes for All, use mediation between the perpetrators and the victim in almost all of the cases. “We have no other way out. The police have a sketchy or minimal knowledge of cybercrime and a lot of time is unnecessarily wasted in looking for the right article to apply. Families are usually scared of approaching the FIA fearing court cases and public humiliation so they seek our help,” adds Ahmad.
Even while seeking the help of organisations, there is no guarantee whether the two parties will let bygones be and ‘settle.’ The reason people rely on mediation is because the law enforcement agencies do not understand cyber bullying as a crime, adds Ahmad. Explaining further, he said that “We already have the required articles in our constitution and law to try the perpetrators in court. Yet, the articles put in by the police while registering an FIR are so weak that it ends up helping the perpetrator and weakening the victim’s case.”
Bullied in cyber space and real life
In a report titled Technology-driven Violence against Women published by Bytes for All, lead researcher Gul Bukhari says that there are no prevailing cybercrime laws as such, but that the current statutes can be applied. It includes Section 25D of the Telegraph Act 1885 which is penalty for causing annoyance; Section 29 of the Telegraph Act 1885 related to transmission of indecent or obscene messages; Sections 36 of the Electronic Transactions Ordinance (ETO) 2002 violation of privacy of information; and Section 38 of ETO.
“The modus operandi is the same in all of these cases,” adds Ahmad. “After tracking the lives of these prominent women, we have seen that threats and abuse on the internet, translates into real life and creates havoc for the person involved.”
The researcher in the case also traces the lives of three women, Aisha (pseudonym for an alleged rape victim from Punjab), Bayhaya (a human rights activist who chose the pseudonym for herself after being repeatedly called the name on the internet) and Baaghi (an activist and a columnist).
All three women represent the repercussions of being publicly visible with their opinions, decisions and stance against violence. They have received vicious threats on social media and have been repeatedly called prostitutes for naming and shaming misogynists on social media or during television transmissions.
“The modus operandi is the same in all of these cases,” adds Ahmad. “After tracking the lives of these prominent women, we have seen that threats and abuse on the internet translates into real life and creates havoc for the person involved.”
Rights activist Sabeen Mahmud is the most glaring example of online violence translating into real life. From her campaign against sectarianism and religious violence to celebrating Valentine’s Day against the wishes of the bigots, to opening her forum at The Second Floor for anyone with a different idea or thought, she was out there with her opinions and ideas and hoped others would be the same.
Her murder by armed assailants in April 2015 silenced even the staunchest of rights activists.
Ahmad and other activists, who are trying to stand against cybercrime, are of the opinion that if some things are fixed, other elements of the investigations will be fixed as well. This means mainly the registration of an FIR, the charges under which the perpetrator is framed, and legislative mechanisms such as the state helping in hiring skilled public prosecutors.
