The Pakistani government needs to wake up to its responsibility of providing quality education for all, the 2009 UNESCO Education For All Global Monitoring Report— Overcoming inequality: why governance maters— states this loud and clear. Pakistan features prominently in this year’s report, which notes the role of governance failure in hindering provision of education for all in the developing countries. Pakistan along with Nigeria is predicted to account for one third of the world’s out-of-school children by 2015 where Pakistan is estimated to have 3.7 million of these children. More importantly, the report does not sugarcoat the fact that Pakistan’s attempts at forging public-private partners and developing social safety nets for the poor, though heavily publicized, have in practice failed to deliver because of poor planning, lack of financial commitment, fragmentation of responsibility among government department and heavy dependence on donors. Continue reading »
Dec 262008
LAHORE 
The phenomenon of an elected president being hounded out of office was incomprehensible to a young bewildered person from Pakistan in those days. I recall asking Abe Schwartz, a senior Washington attorney, what was it that President Richard Nixon had done to warrant his resignation? His answer: “He lied”