Adil Najam
Some 70 people are dead. Nearly a dozen of them were children. Most at a mosque in Darra Adem Khel as they assembled for Juma prayers. Others at a mosque in Sulaiman Khel during Isha prayers. According to Dawn, both were mosques frequented by anti-Taliban tribal elders in Northwest Pakistan.
On October 30, The Indus Entrepreneurs or TIE held a national conference on entrepreneurship whose theme was “Unleashing Change”. Without a generation of innovators and entrepreneurs, job creation in Pakistan will stay dormant, while our population and its appetite for consumption goes through the roof. TIECON 2010, as the conference was branded was a great success. It brought together many experienced entrepreneurs to share their experiences with aspiring tycoons. The issue of entrepreneurship and the value it adds to the economy, to society and to politics needs greater attention than it gets, and organiser Moonis Rehman did very well in bringing it to light through TIECON 2010.
The one aspect of the conference that disappointed however was an aspect, that in recent months, I have found to be common to virtually every conference, workshop, seminar or discussion I attended. It may be the single most disturbing aspect of public life in Pakistan. Our national public discourse has become so irrational, personalised, emotive and imbalanced, that a substantive and honest discussion about important issues has become nearly impossible.
Tamashbeen
This is a distubring photo. Maybe even more than the one I had posted earlier.
It shows “sanitary workers” (wow, what a ‘sanitary’ spin!) in Karachi disposing of “dog carcasses” in Karachi as part of a municipal campaign to “eliminate” stray dogs. Supposedly, there are an alarming number of stray dogs in Karachi and around 150,000 people in Pakistan are bitten by stray dogs annually.
I find the picture of so many dead dogs disturbing and I am sorry to shove it in your face, but I have been wondering whether there is a better solution to this. There has to be. But what?
Dear Readers,
While All Things Pakistan has remained alive and online, it has been dormant since June 11, 2011 - when, on the blog's 5th anniversary, we decided that it was time to move on. We have been heartened by your messages and the fact that a steady traffic has continued to enjoy the archived content on ATP. While the blog itself will remain dormant, we are now beginning to add occasional (but infrequent) new material by the original authors of the blog, mostly to archive what they may now publish elsewhere. We will also be updating older posts to make sure that new readers who stumble onto this site still find it useful.
We hope you will continue to find ATP a useful venue to reflect upon and express your Pakistaniat. - Editors
