Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Back in Pakistan and loving it!

The second best decision I ever made in my life was to come back to Pakistan. The best decision I made was teaching in this country that has been labelled as the ‘most’ dangerous country in world.
Michael Kugelman, the program associate for South Asia at the  Woodrow Wilson Centre, recently wrote a blog for Dawn about the return of expats to Pakistan. He concluded the article with a question to expats about what it is like to be back.
This is a question posed to me almost on a daily basis by anyone I meet who discovers I have returned after having studied abroad.
I’m back because I am a Pakistani; I belong here and Pakistan has been great to me so far. After having lived abroad for six years, I don’t regret boarding the flight back to Pakistan for good.
While the good food and being amongst my own people feels fantastic, the best part of living in Pakistan is the amount of positive work one can do here. I didn’t want to be one of those expats living abroad who sat at the dinner table and argued about the pitiable state of Pakistan, their biggest fear being coming back.
As ambitious as it sounds, I wanted to be the one to go back and start working from bottom up. I wanted to connect with the people on ground, and understand what the root cause was for the problems faced by the locals, and perhaps help clear the mess, if there was any.
Teaching was one of the best ways to achieve all that, so I joined NUST and Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU) where, of course, a month’s salary was equal to what my friends graduating from Cambridge were earning in a day!
However, an incident changed my entire perspective about the salary.
In the first month of teaching in Pakistan a student from Balochistan who studies at QAU approached me and requested if I could find him a job since he was now graduating with a Master’s degree. His next statement rattled me to the very core; it shook the ground beneath me.
He was willing to work for just Rs500 a month.
Can you imagine the desperation of this man and his family?
I realised I could no longer wait for decades to be well settled enough before I started making any real contributions to the country; the time to do ‘something’ was now – not a moment later.
QAU, where students come from all over Pakistan, has been an eye-opening experience for me. The Pakistan that most of the readers of The Express Tribune know is curtailed to Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad. What they don’t realise is that there is a Pakistan out there which is diverse, liberal, and intellectual. That is the real Pakistan that people in major cities are disconnected from – a Pakistan we Pakistani’s ourselves have failed to discover.
It’s been a whole year since I started teaching here, and I really don’t know if anybody is listening but what is important to me, is that I am bringing an alternate voice to the crowd. I’m no Messiah; neither have I got any ‘revolutionary’ ambitions; I’m just another brick in the wall, like many others, playing a part to build Pakistan.
In my previous blog, I mentioned how radically different my teaching methods were, and the sort of discussions I have in my classroom. I’d consider myself successful even if a handful of minds are able to look at the world from a difference perspective after attending my lectures.
Apart from teaching, a major chunk of my time is consumed by students, counselling them in higher education, job search, training them in research, hearing them out and understanding their basic requirements; basically in letting them know you care.
Before I started working, I was forewarned. I was told to be weary of what I said in my classrooms and to be cautious of attracting the attention of mullahs, the ISI, and the likes – since the society we live in is radicalised. Well, I’m proud to say, that having taught Islamic political philosophy at QAU, having critiqued the religion down to its bones, and bashing the army and the ISI, teaching at an Army university I have not once been harassed or been picked up by the agencies.
And there is a reason. The reason is that I don’t follow any political agenda in my classrooms, and the students over the course of the semester understood that. I remind them that everything I say in class is only a perspective; I don’t know the truth, and I don’t claim to know it either. I push them to do their own research. I give them a different view and challenge them to disprove it.
I have spoken to Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), Jamaatud Dawa (JUD) and have interacted with people from the Army and exposed them to my views. I feel there is always a way to go about things. Pakistan has a culture and code of conduct in the society just like any other society in the world. One could do or say anything one wants, without fear of harm, as long as it is done in the right manner. Problems occur when people try to push their own agenda on to the society with complete disregard of any prevailing views.
There is a Pakistan that is shown on TV, and then there is the Pakistan where I feel an enormous amount of freedom – more freedom, at times, than I felt in the United States. I only wish more Pakistani’s from good schools could come back to Pakistan and start teaching.
Good teachers, make good nations.

30 Pakistani scientists make contribution


As many as 30 Pakistani scientists working at CERN made visible contribution in the research that has finally led to discover the Higgs boson, also nicknamed the “God particle” that travels faster than light.

According to the working mechanism, 15 Pakistani scientists used to work at the main laboratory in CERN, developed in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco-Swiss border in 1954, while remaining 15 were engaged in carrying out research work simultaneously in line with the directions given by a team of senior CERN scientists using 8 MV Pelletron Tandem accelerator facility based on sophisticated technology at National Centre for Physics (NCP).

NCP’s Director General, Hamid Saleem, told this correspondent that in all, 15 physicists, ten engineers and five lasers and opto-electronics experts contributed in the research that led to the discovery being widely considered as one of the greatest achievements in the field of science.

These scientists included Dr Hafiz Hoorani, Dr Jamila Bashir Butt, Hassan Shahzad, Taimoor Khursheed, Saleh Muhammad, Muhammad Ahmad, Wajid Ali Khan, Adilur Rehman Zafar, Ishtiaq Hussain, Waqar Ahmad, Shamoona Fawad Qazi, Imran Malik, Zia Aftab and Muhammad Shariq Khan.

He said a grid having 500 computers was set up in NCP and the Pakistani scientists have so far contributed in numerous ways including detector construction, simulation, physics analysis, grid computing, computational software development and manufacturing of mechanical equipment.

The data provided by NCP stated that Pakistan has made material contribution to the tune of 10 million dollars. It also signed an agreement with CERN that doubled the Pakistani contribution from one to two million Swiss francs. With this new agreement Pakistan started construction of the resistive plate chambers required for the CMS muon system. While more recently, a protocol has been signed enhancing Pakistan’s total contribution to 10 million dollar.

Hamid Saleem said the Pakistani scientists were also among those proud fellows who were wildly applauding the most ambitious experiment held at CERN with protons being fired in 27-km tunnel in an attempt to unlock the secrets of the universe.

He said they prepared CMS detector consisting of assembling and testing of 288 Resistive Plate Chambers, helped in fabrication of mechanical pieces at the cost much less than the European cost and designed tracker alignment and other opto-electronic related work.

It is also pertinent to mention here that CERN has given best supplier award to Heavy Mechanical Complex in recognition of its services in providing necessary equipment in the preparatory phases of the experiment.

Hamid Saleem said NCP is offering basic facilities to conduct research in various fields including centrifuge, accelerator, fission and fusion, coating and metallization, medical and pharmaceutical, semi-conductor, solar, live stock, plasma sterilization, food processing and packaging.

Pakistan's Oscar winning film to be screened in India

Pakistan's lone filmmaker to win an Oscar Aqward recently, Sharmeen Obaid is really happy! Ask her the reason, and she clarifies: "The monsoons have not quite hit Pakistan yet, so most of us are still sweltering in the summer heat! But, I am really not bothered about these heat blues! As more countries continue to screen Saving Face, our launch in India takes place next week. If you happen to be in Delhi or Mumbai please reach out to the Asia Society: Saving Face screens on the 23rd and the 24th in those two cities! It's a great occasion for me!"

Pakistan bags silver medal

LAHORE, July 16: A Pakistani student won silver medal at the international mathematical Olympiad which continued for about two weeks at an Argentinean town, Mar del Plata, and concluded on Monday.
He is Syed Waqar Ali Shah, an A-level student of Pak-Turk International School, Karachi, who competed with about 550 students from 96 countries of the world.
Pakistan had sent a batch of five students to participate in the international Olympiad held every year. They were selected from thousands of students who had participated in national mathematical Olmpiad held in October last and national science talent contest of HEC. Among them 75 students getting top positions were selected who were given two-week training at Lahore.
Further tests were held selecting 40 followed by 20 and 10 and five at the last test.
It was after such a hard series of tests they were selected for the international contest. The HEC would honour the remaining four students with special awards on their return. They are: Usama Zaid Malik of Elite International School, Islamabad, Azlan Shaukat of Sadiq Public School, Bahawalpur, Ms Huma Sibghat of Hamza Army Public School/College, Rawalpindi, and Dilsher Ahmad of International School of Choueifat, Faisal Town, Lahore. The team was led by Prof Dr Barbu Berceanu, a foreign faculty member of Abdus Salam School of Mathematical Sciences of GCU, Lahore and Dr Ahmad Mahmood Qureshi of FCC University, Lahore.
ASSMA Director-General Dr A.D. Raza Chaudhry, coordinator for training of the national team, said in a statement here on Monday that this year the international contests were extremely hard and tough at all stages including the grand jury. “It is, indeed, a great achievement of a Pakistani student to win silver medal competing hundreds of students from 96 countries. The nation must be proud of the achievement,” he added.
He congratulated Syed Waqar Ali Shah’s teachers, especially his coaches, Dr Babu Berceanu and Dr Mircea Becheanu. He said this international victory had proved that Pakistani students had great talent and could also win gold medal in future. They needed expert coaching and training in mathematics. He said HEC and GCU, Lahore, had commendable efforts to raise the standard of science education, particularly mathematical science by providing the best international faculty to Abdus Salam School of Mathematical Sciences.