11 rules for the Pakistani do-gooder
There’s much to be said about the spirit of volunteerism and philanthropy, so deeply ingrained in desi culture. In a material world, it’s great to see people making the effort to venture beyond their personal spheres. Before leaving one’s comfort zone, however, it might be important to be a little prepared. This is true not only for the good-hearted burger-bachas, but also their proactive supervisors, armed to the teeth with terrifyingly good intentions. After squirming in my shoes watching just such an army of angels at work, I thought it might be useful to have a Community Service Orientation Pack, ...
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Charity clubs: Everybody’s got a plan
There are six people seated around a table, each with paper and pencil in hand. There’s the quiet hum of an air conditioner and the rustle of paper and a serious, practical kind of silence in the air. A paper with questions listed on it is passed around the table for verification- these questions are to be asked in the interview conducted by these six people. Someone giggles, which is immediately cut short with “Seriously, please.” Is this a top secret board meeting of a corporation? Has someone died? No, it’s a meeting of a few 17 and 18-year-olds… ...
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Video blog: What I saw in Badin
Two hundred people have fallen prey to the devastation that hit Badin and other areas in Sindh by more than 1,000 millimeters of rain in the last month. This is the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in Sindh. Compare this to the 70 odd millimeters of rain that has fallen in Karachi over the past few days and one begins to realize the magnitude of the catastrophe Sindh is facing. I was in Badin earlier this week with a group of volunteers called SA Relief. I witnessed, first hand, what exactly was going on. From our entrance into the Golarchi area ...
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Too old to survive the floods
As I haul four heavy jute bags of relief food items on my back, frantically searching through the hundreds of tents, hoping to give away the relief goods to the ones most in need, my sight stops at an old man sitting with three other elderly women. They seem old. Old enough to not have the strength to even hold one of the bags I am about to offer them. As I approach their tent, even before offering them one of the bags, I am stunned at their reaction: These elderly people have tears trickling down their wrinkly cheeks and one ...
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Flood tax: Leave us alone, go catch tax evaders
So far Pakistan’s economic loss due to the massive flooding is calculated to be$43 billion. This is equivalent to one fourth of the total GDP which today stands at $170 billion. For Pakistan, where financing the state, military and debt costs more than what we earn, such an enormous loss to the country’s economy has left everyones mouth agape. And it seems that due to the recent economic losses incurred, the dream of increased spending on human development is far from materializing. There is a dire need of funds to finance the relief and rehabilitation work keeping in view that the tax-to-GDP ratio ...
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Thinking big at a small age
It was the eve of August 22, when I was at a tent village established by the Scouts in Khairpur. I was reporting from the district as well as volunteering with the Scouts. As I was talking to the IDPs, inquiring about the facilities, one woman said that though they are being supplied with food and shelter, they don’t have any money. Suddenly, a boy standing at a little distance jumped in: “Allah saved us from the floods, we have been brought here, we should be thankful.” This was how I met 11-year-old Ali Haider, a high-spirited, confident and slightly ...
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For those who haven’t donated…
I was endlessly going on about how fundraising for the flood survivors has developed into some kind of a competition among various organisations, all indefatigably striving to outdo each other, when my wife suddenly interrupted. “What are you doing to help them?” she said. “Nothing that I know of.” A pause followed. After struggling to find some face-saving answer, I naively replied, “Don’t know yet.” “Donate through an NGO, perhaps?” she suggested. “Hmmm… but I don’t trust them.” “Then what else will you do?” Good question. I wanted to help, make a difference… but how? Perhaps the events that followed the earthquake in the country’s north in ...
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‘When you cheat, you steal someone’s right to fairness’
As our car and truck approached Thatta, one question kept echoing in my mind. Do we really deserve to see our country in such an agony? The answer that repeatedly kept cropping up in my head was “yes”. Both my heart and my mind had come to this conclusion. Regardless of the pain, I wasn’t able to simply ignore the answer. My friends and I were taking relief goods to Thatta to distribute amongst the flood-stricken IDP’s who had settled down in Thatta. Those who we could not help After crossing Dhabeji, I witnessed the flood ravaged people camping on both ...
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Our cricket players did nothing wrong…
From outright fatwas of ‘hang them’ to milder sentences of life-time bans to the conspiracies – everyone seems to have been taken by surprise with corruption in cricket. However, does the occasion really call for such disgust? Is it really that shocking for us to learn of the down-payments on no-ball guarantees? I, for one, am not surprised at all. In fact, I thought people would have treated it like a regular episode and moved on. The contrary response rather amazes me. Young players involved in the scandal and I think they simply did what we told them to do. In ...
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Flood zones: A breeding ground for terrorism
In Pakistan, no matter how bad the situation is, no matter how hopeless the facts, things can always get worse. So while the recent incidents of terrorism in Lahore and Quetta added much pain to an already heartbreaking situation, they were not really surprising. With the Armed Forces and most of the administrative machinery busy catering to the millions rendered homeless and penniless, the terrorists have had ample chance to regroup and recharge. Even though some of the flood hit areas in the tribal belt were home to the TTP and other mainstream terrorist groups including the Haqqani Group, terrorists ...
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