Behind Closed Doors: Archives and Archiving in Pakistan

Masadi
In Pakistan the monopoly on information has not yet reached the stage it has in the West where a handful of corporations dominate all media and describe culture and contour world views for the very vast majority turning them into factory produced cheerful robots.

While as you mention regarding monopoly on information and the comparison between the West and Pakistan, it is true however, aside from the comparison in it's own state would you say that the sources of Information in Pakistan can be trusted with preservinng and release of information when it needs to be referred to by the public?

Feroz writes" Also, lack of information and its release to the general public also fulfills the state's requirement of keeping the general public misinformed, disinformed and unable to question the state's version on any issue "

You have to look at the structure of the Pakistani state as well. When the military has captured the state and rules in an uneasy alliance with the feudals and colonials, you expect secrecy of the military sort, but that secrecy is based not on institutional control but rather explicit control which makes it clumsy and incomplete. Even the very illiterate among the Pakistani public is more aware of his surroundings and their relationship to the wider society than most educated folk in the West kept happily distracted by an all encompassing media.

Have a nice day,

TNITC masadi

#1 feroz, as regards the US and Western world, the more important question is how are commissions of inquiry formed and what use the public can make of the product of those commissions and what all gets blacked out as "sensitive information". In Pakistan the monopoly on information has not yet reached the stage it has in the West where a handful of corporations dominate all media and describe culture and contour world views for the very vast majority turning them into factory produced cheerful robots.

Have a nice day,

TNITC masadi is back!

test

Information has always been a preserve of the state and the state, will never release any information, which questions it in the conduct of national affairs.

Also, lack of information and its release to the general public also fulfills the state's requirement of keeping the general public misinformed, disinformed and unable to question the state's version on any issue.

Thirdly; Pakistani state sees information as a state monopoly, whose denial to the public is seen as a way of not making the state or any of its officals accountable for their actions.

Furthermore, the opening of the state archives might raise questions that might directly/indirectly undermine the state's offical myths about Pakistan itself.

Any form of accountibility or a process that holds those in power accountable, in Pakistan, will never be allowed and the public access to the national archives have to seen in this context.

Has the report of any commission of enquiry been made public in Pakistan?

ciao