Personal Diary © Burhan Rasool

I told them my target is not to end corruption this year. For a moment they went into a state of shock and then a thunder roar of laughter. Since then, they are supporting me like a nicely jelled-in team.

Imagine yourself running a business with 3.5 million regular customers per year. You charge 100 rupees to 70% of customers (1.05 million) and 1500 rupees to 30% of customers (2.45 million). This makes your annual revenues worth 1.82 billion rupees. Not bad, right?
This is pure-play business economy of all 8 Boards of Intermediate and Secondary Education across Punjab.

Now imagine yourself running an institute or a tuition center that has a reputation of producing best of the best results, year after year.  And your target market is willing to pay any cost in anticipation of a bright & prosperous future of their loved ones. You’ve been able to successful build this reputation by creating an (illegal) economy within the (legal) economy. You must make sure that your students are allocated an exam center of your choice, Superintendent of your choice, invigilating staff of your choice and seating plan of your choice. Before that, you must know & reach the paper-setters well before the exam starts and offer each one of them a convincing proposition. After the exam has been conducted, you must know the people who are going to mark your students’ papers. According to rules, rechecking of potential top 50 positions is carried out before the declaration of results. Not all your students would be targeting the prestigious top 50 positions, right? So if a Data-Entry operator “accidently” enters more marks than what your student actually scored, there is no way someone will find this out, unless the same students requests his paper(s) to be rechecked.

Given all this is true, if you were a stakeholder would you favor the automation of this whole examination process in order to ensure minimal human intervention?

I believe, we have always been an ideologically split Nation. There have always been differences of views between religious & liberal extremists especially on “the right lifestyle”; with both trying to dominate and influence the other. Both parties have always considered themselves Elite and Superior than the other. Both have displayed high egos and hatred against the other time and again. Having said that they have miraculously managed to coexist like a prolonged bad marriage.

In my opinion, Jinnah was a success only until the creation of Pakistan because most major Religious Opinion Leaders (ROLs) jelled in nicely with him for a common religious and/or economic cause. But later, in my opinion, these major ROLs plus some very high level members of Jinnah’s team (liberal lookalikes) felt betrayed by Jinnah after his first presidential address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan (August 11, 1947), wherein he said, “…You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State”. For them it was a U-Turn and many of them silently stayed in power with him, waiting for the opportune moment to fulfill the sacred cause of establishing a theocratic state.
I have a strong feeling that my opinion (above) will turn into fact if a free & liberal investigation is carried out (even today) to find answers to the following questions:

1. What were differing opinions on the issue of minorities amongst Jinnah’s Cabinet Members?
2. Why did the Constituent Assembly adopt the “Objective Resolution” which was against the soul and spirit of Jinnah’s address of August 11, 1947, right after he died?
3. Who sent that ambulance without fuel to Jinnah (on his last day), which hastened his end and the whole series of events starting from 2-3 weeks before Jinnah’s death?