Pakistan’s Software Industry

Re:Romair#182

Any government run institution in any country will have some amount of corruption because government organizations in general lack proper accountability. I am sure you are aware of the high levels of corruption in New York and Chicago city governments. So unless we privatize everything in society with strict corporate controls, some corruption at high levels is unavoidable. Even in the private sector, you have corruption as was evident in the corporate scandals in the US e.g. Enron.

The question is whether you have the petty day to day corruption for essential things in life like getting a power connection, telephone connection, paying the water bill, settling ordinary judicial cases etc. The petty day to day corruption is directly related to the size of the economic pie. If you have a growing economic pie, there is plenty for everyone and there is less incentive to adopt the back door techniques to get ahead. Also the salary of police, judicial officials is high which results in a lack of incentive to be corrupt. There is really no other way to get rid of it. All this talk of revolution is bogus. If you have a paltry salary as a policeman, of course you will use your position to ask for a bribe to get some economic relief. If you made a lot, why would you bother with petty bribes?

I can understand a guy from a highly populated congested place like Mumbai like this Patel dude getting impressed with Lahore....Bet the same guy would be even more impressed with Mysore , if he cared enough to pay a visit.........has anybody here been to Mysore ?

Manto...okay so Lahore has fountains , wide roads etc. So what ? From what I gather , Lahore is very similar to smaller Indian cities like Mysore (my place) , Chandigarh , Vizag ...which are all beautiful , spacious and all that......

That is why comparing Lahore with big Indian cities is like apples and oranges...for big Indian cities like Delhi , Mumbai , Chennai... priority is $$$ , jobs , business. Bangalore used to be a most beautiful pollution free city just a decade back. They used to call Bangalore `Garden City` . And then IT happened.All sorts of industries began to set base in B`lore. Mass migration of people all over the country to B`lore happened. So now , Bangalore is a highly polluted city choking at the seams but earning revenues in the range of $15-20 billion.....

rsidhar #159: You are correct regarding the impact IT can have in reducing beaurecracy.......But I am not sure how it could impact the top two most corrupt organizations, as per the survey, i.e. police and judiciary. It is quite amazing to see that in South Asia, 100% of the people say they have faced police corruption.......

There is a company in Pakistan, which is computerizing land records. This should reduce the beaurecratic power of the patwari, in a society in which land is the main form of investment. And in many cases, the only form. However, how can the actions of the police and judges be changed by IT? They have to give certain decisions and take certain actions, which are independent of the medium (online, off-line) that is utilized........

What is interesting is that all of us on Chowk (upper-middle class and upper class crowd from a social point of view in Pakistan) is actually on the other side of this corruption problem. We are not the awam. We are a part of the decision making and empowered class. We are, infact, the beneficiries of this corrupt system. We are related to the police officers, deputy commissioners, etc. We have relatives and friends who are judges, landowners, businessmen who are beneficiaries of this culture......

I have quite a few friends and classfellows who are in civil services. As well as some relatives. I myself almost applied, at one point. They are in the police, foreign service, taxation, customs etc. There are people on Chowk who are sons and daughters of beaurecrats, generals, politicians etc. etc. So many of us probably never took a driving test in Pakistan, and got their licenses through contacts........So many of us know politicians, and SSPs and have an uncle who is a magistrate and a judge, etc.

Yet we are the ones who keep talking about cleaning up Pakistan (in some cases in a revolutionary manner). When, in fact we need to clean up the social class that we come from. Those surveys actually point to the exploitation of the Pakistani society by individuals who are much more comfortable in the Chowk crowd, then with the average Pakistani who suffers from such corruption.........

This is the real problem.........And I am not sure how IT could solve it............

re: 180, 178, 175, 177 ....
Thanks to the ``Father of Pakistans/Islamic nuclear bomb``, the entire world knows of Pakistans complicity in proliferating nukes. If it were not of Bushs dependence on Mushy, Pakistan would have received severe spankings by the world body. I still remember the footage when Pakistanis used to run around with a replica of ``Islamic bomb`` on their shoulders.
BTW, I read that Pakistan has dismantled a missile like structure which it had built in a town square (?) several years back, I guess didn`t want to project that kind of image anymore.

urstruly: I think you should talk to someone who works for the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission on Dr. Qadeer - it is not without reason that they almost uniformly despise this man there as a self-promoter in that Agency. The unsung heroes (at least in the eyes of Pakistanis like me who were thrilled to see Pakistan`s ``fitting response`` to India under BJP in 1987) of Pakistan`s nuclear project are people like Dr. Munir (late head of the Atomic Energy Commission). As one man from the Atomic Energy Commission told me, this was their project and they were responsible for 18 of the 19 steps involved in going from raw materials to nuclear weapons and Qadeer`s outift had only one step (the centrifuges) - Qadeer actually requested AEC to be present at the Chagai testing (with which he had nothing to do with and therefore was not even invited to attend until after he requested), and at the last minute took the limelight by calling a press conference. This was team work, and all Pakistani leaders (from ZAB to Zia to BB to NS on down), regardless of their differences, were united in their efforts to ensure that Pakistan would never be held hostage to Indian military threats and that 1971 would never again be repeated.

Furthermore, Qadeer has played fast and loose with the sacred task of ensuring Pakistan`s security by selling off its nuclear secrets to anyone willing to pay him his millions - and thus enriched himself to the tune of almost a billion dollars by many estimates. You can check all this if you wish.

Or you can join the rest of the half-brained maulvis in making a hero out of this self-promoter who has jeopardized this sacred task of protecting Pakistan. After all, no one accused the maulvis of being rational.

Re: # 168

.......... excellent post, except i see that the same malaise has crept into ``secular`` education in the cities .......... right up to the mid seventies there was no such thing as islamic studies at the o/a levels and fa/fsc .............at uet in the mid seventies there was one 50 pt subject called ``islamiyat`` during the four years and it was a hoot because it was primarily focussed on the right way to have sex in islam !

....... today you can meet graduates of aitchison who would make maulana fazloo proud ............

Urstruly#162:
Do you believe that Dr. Salam was ``laanti``, a traitor and an agent of India, U.S and Israel, as claimed by the learned author of the article pasted by you?

And if Dr. Salam was a traitor, what would you call Dr. Qadeer who was born and brought up and got his education in India? Shouldn`t he be called a traitor to India`s muslims?

Re: # 162

Ya Allah... Pakistan ko Hafiz Shafi-ur-Rahman jaise mulk dushmanon kay shar say bachaa!


Any one who compares Dr. A Q Khan to Saladin is either delusional or an idiot... either way ... bad for Pakistan and the Pakistani people.

Re: # 174

Oh so ... Aakar Patel is a liar.... because he chose to present one side of Pakistan people like you don`t? Shame ... that is not the sign of a balanced personality.

Dr. Qadeer Khan is a Kutay ka bacha... who ever helped proliferate our nuclear assets are pigs...

These idiots didn`t know that the first rule of ``Nuclear deterrence`` is that we don`t share with others...

Now... thanks to these bastards... not only do we have to worry about a nuclear armed neighbor to the east but also possibly one to the west... meanwhile ... this brotherly Islamic country is entering into alliances with our eastern neighbor every day...

SHAME ON people like QADEER KHAN .. and the haraamzadas who support him...

And don`t tell me he invented the bomb.... we stole it ... like all other countries in the world.

Mantolives,

Honesty is the only true liberator.

Please tell me which of my statements in #163 is wrong

As for as Aakar Patel`s article - he is a manipulating liar too. Look at his worthless,
meaningless statement.
``This series was a conversation and a debate between the pluralism of modern,
irreligious India and the pluralism of modern, Islamic Pakistan``

YLH, you are more honest than Aakar Patel. You admitted that there are systemic
and institutionalized prejudice in Pakistan.
People like Aakar Patel are more dangerous to pakistanis than anyone else.
They fool you with their duplicity.

I know you are well intentioned and that your being in Pakistan may limit what
you can or cannot say (the same is true of Ahmed Madani)

The real manipulators and culprits are the `chowkies` (and other Pakistanis)
who live in the West, enjoy its freedoms but still dont tell the truth.

Re: # 166

So going by your standard... of the impact you are making on your surrounding... you belong to the lowest possible class human beings I suppose...

BTW do you think calling some one Qadiani when they have repeatedly said that they are not ... is your way of being one up and superior? Pathetic if you ask me...Oh... you didn`t clarify ... why was I an ``anti-Islam bigot jewish agent``? Because I don`t agree with you?

You keep tying yourself up in knots.

abdus salam unveiled ...........

........... many people on chowk, specially jay and his cadre of rss activists, have been asking questions about abdus salam ............. now, finally, urstruly has revealed the truth ........

............ according to the revelation posted by our resident islamist, abdus salam was a ``saamraji agunt``, i.e. an agent of the imperialists who worked for the cia and was a high ranking member of the israeli intelligence agency, mossad...........he was awarded the nobel prize as a reward for his services to the cause of imperialism and zionism ..........

............. and now you know the rest of the story !

p.s. there is no limit to the idiocy of the ummah - and then we wonder why we can`t write software

Re: # 170

So much for your ``attributed`` sources in Indian newspapers...

Re: # 164

Here is something an Indian, with some credibility (he is the editor of Mid Day) wrote last year:

For me, Pakistan was a foreign country. Visitors to Pakistan will be shocked at how they have kept their cities and their airports. They are truly world class. India can never be this efficient or clean.

Lahore is paradise. It has huge gardens splashed through the middle of its roads. An enormous canal glides through the middle of a thoroughfare. Indians will also be amazed with how much at ease the Lahauri is with his culture and how little this culture has to do with religion.

To me that culture is alien because it is Punjabi, not because it is Muslim. To me, the groups of Sardars walking again in the streets of Lahore’s old city with the kirpans by their side and the shopkeepers at their elbow, seemed to belong there. They were Lahauris.

But for all of Pakistan’s foreign-ness, it had everything that we pride India for. It was pluralist, it was joyous, it was tolerant. In the colourful Indian crowds, clapping, shouting, shopping, Pakistans also discovered something perhaps foreign to themselves and perhaps something of themselves. This was the greatest series ever played in the history of cricket, perhaps because it was not about cricket at all. Cricket was not the winner here; cricket was not even in the running. With their teams in the vanguard, the legions of India and Pakistan met in an embrace half-combative, half-friendly, fully emotional. People will cite Douglas Jardine’s Bodyline series as the defining moment of cricket, when it matured into an aggressive modern sport from being a gentleman’s leisurely pursuit. It is a white man’s world, but if ever a series was historic, it was the one we just won. This series was a conversation and a debate between the pluralism of modern, irreligious India and the pluralism of modern, Islamic Pakistan.I’m not sure who won that.

http://www.chowk.com/show_article.cgi?aid=00003380&channel=gymkhana