Outside Islamabad

Maya Khan’s ‘chasing-couples in parks’ episode that aired last week caused quite a stir in Pakistan and even received coverage abroad but it’s a series called “where is your daughter? ” that aired in October on the same show and channel, that is truly disturbing.

In this particular episode aired on October 5th of last year, the recipe for “Beti ka Achar” (pickled daughter) with ingredients that will create the perfect obedient daughter or daughter-in-law is given in grueling detail.

The ingredients include one daughter, a fist-full of trust, a pinch of ‘anger’ salt, a tablespoon of crushed ‘question’ pepper, and a spoon of ‘good breeding’ essence. The narrator of the recipe recommends that you keep the mixture in a corner of the house where there is shade and no sunlight; otherwise she warns the mixture might go bad.

There is something especially sinister about educated women who were born into liberated and privileged families in Pakistan advocating this nonsense on live TV. Do they believe that only they are God’s chosen few who have the right to be independent and work?

But this wasn’t the only ridiculous, insulting and chauvinistic recipe aired on her show, two days later they ran another recipe for “Beti ki Curry”.

Along with the first unappetising achar recipe, they also ran a report in which a girl named Misbah is accused of killing her father with her boyfriend. In the report a police officer alleges that Misbah was being ‘treated indecently by her father’ and the reporter goes on to say that Misbah says her father ‘used to make her do things to him.’ I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds like accusations of sexual assault. But instead of investigating further, the Maya brigade ignore this detail and focus on the ‘rebellious’ girl killing her father with her boyfriend.

Maya Brigade Background
Maya Khan’s parks episode aired on January 17th, started making the social media rounds on Jan 21st. Within 12 hours, the video went viral and was addressed in op-ed’s and blogs on mainstream media (Tribune, Dawn, BBC Urdu.) Thousands signed an online petition and letters were sent to Samaa’s chairman.

Soon Samaa issued an apology, featuring a rather reluctant half-apology from Maya Khan. Blogger and journalist Beena Sarwar gives more detail about the social media movement here.

As someone from inside the industry, I say rather guiltily that I have seen many things go on air that should have never made the light of day. I have also rarely seen a news channel willing to apologise for its misconduct or misstep. So Samaa’s apology is a brave and welcome change.

But, I also believe that if the ‘parks’ video didn’t go viral, we would not have built enough pressure through social media to make Samaa take notice and issue an apology. Samaa will surely scrutinize all of Maya’s shows in the future.

Imagine if the “Beti Ka Achar” video went viral in October, maybe the parks episode wouldn’t have happened.

Beyond Maya Brigade
What I am getting at is Maya Khan is a symptom of a larger problem, where our news channels are a slave to ratings rather than an ethical guideline or code of conduct. I wrote a piece for dawn.com detailing the larger debate and the dangers to media independence if a government body enforces codes in Pakistan. But to summarize and give context to this particular Maya Khan case:

The problem with these morning shows, not just Samaa, is that they bring in a lot of revenue through advertising. Many news channels run their operations off the money they make in these shows, but the show often operates in “no man’s land”, with little or editorial oversight and accountability from the newsroom. (As an example the Maya Khan episodes with the “Beti ki Curry” recipe (04:05-04:20) and the “Beti ka Achar” recipe (05:16-05:24), both run with disclaimers saying the content of the show does not necessarily represent Samaa’s views. )

That is simply not on, if the show is airing on a news channel, and that is what Samaa is registered with PEMRA as, they have to be held responsible for all content.

My appeal is that we cannot lose steam with the parks episode. We have to continue to build pressure, for all news channels to realise that they cannot afford to sacrifice ethical standards for ratings and money.

Furthermore, now the New York Times is reporting that ‘four local nongovernment organizations (are filing) a civil suit against Samaa TV in Pakistan’s Supreme Court, hoping to galvanize the country’s top judges into action.’

With this latest petition in the Supreme court, the time for news channels to get their houses in order has become all the more pertinent. Here are three tangible suggestions from my original article on Dawn.com, tailored to the latest Maya fiasco for these channels:

1. The editorial staff in news organisations need to draft their own ‘code of conduct or editorial guidelines’. News channels can use the Society of Professional Journalists code, which had been adopted by news organisations around the world as a starting point. Once complete they need to make their guidelines available on their news sites. They also need to open their codes to greater public scrutiny, as is suggested by the SPJ code, maybe through a comments section on their website.

2. The ‘letters to the editors’ format in newspapers needs to translate on to our TV screens for news channels to be held accountable and to be considered ethical. This can be done by opening up ticker streams to viewer feedback. Some news channels already do this; but unfortunately, many are usually moderated to show the good, rather than the bad. This feedback mechanism should be taken seriously. News outlets should respond to the criticism they receive either through a half-hour weekly show hosted by their editors with live calls or through short segments scattered in their news bulletins.

3. News channels need to train their reporters and staff. Few media professionals come into the field with an education or training in journalism. News organisations need to fill the gap, by offering training courses to its employees. (From 2004 till 2010, the broadcast industry grew six-fold to 24/7 news channels. Our universities offering journalism courses did not grow with the same ease nor did they adjust their curricula to the needs of 24/7 live news. Many untrained and inexperienced reporters were pushed into a dizzying environment of breaking news. To be fair, some news channels did hire international journalists and consultants to train their team as they prepared for their launch. But few offered or offer refresher courses for its existing employees or new courses for its incumbent employees, despite their massive growth.)

By advocating these three concrete steps, which are key ingredients to an “ethical media recipe’ we will protect the media’s independence and prevent further ‘Beti ka Achar’ recipes from being propagated by Maya-like brigades in Pakistan.

Also published on dawn.com

Originally published on dawn.com.

“I am so happy I didn’t plan anything, because everything worked out,” said 25 year-old Moin Khan with a laugh.

That laugh must hurt. After all, his ribs are broken from an accident in Arad, Romania, which has forced him to pull the brakes, temporarily, on his ‘epic solo motorcycle journey.’

With a Pakistani and an American passport in his backpack, Moin is travelling from San Francisco, California to Lahore, Pakistan on his Honda F4i.

After posting dozens of videos and thousands of pictures on his facebook page “ADifferentAgenda” from the 15 countries he has already conquered in more than a 100 days, a man crashed into him on October 20th deconstructing his bike and hospitalizing him.

But Moin doesn’t seem the slightest bit disappointed.

For him the crash has simply given him an opportunity to cement “ADifferentAgenda” just a little bit deeper in Romania. His first post after the horrific crash was titled “My bike’s totaled, a couple (of) bones are broken and new Romanian friends are made.”

The man who crashed into him visited him everyday in the hospital. And local bike enthusiast Daniel Jula, after hearing about Moin’s crash, showed up at the hospital and offered to help put his bike back together. He searched for parts all over Romania, and even managed to procure some.

As Moin recuperates at a newly discovered distant relatives place in Bucharest, Romania finding a radiator proved to be a huge challenge. But then another complete stranger named Adi, showed up at his doorstep with a brand new radiator, which he called “a gift from the (bike) stunter community in Romanian” in the video below.

The video elicited dozens of thanks and prayers for Adi from Moin’s fans in Pakistan on his facebook page.

Moin has been overwhelmed by the kindness extended to him from complete strangers, ever since he bid farewell to his friends at the Golden Gate Bridge on July 10th.

“Before the trip, I would have never have thought of inviting some stranger into my house,” admits the biker who grew up in Lahore.

“But it happened to me, not once, but a few times on the trip; in Canada, in Germany and even in Switzerland, which was so random and so beautiful. “

Here’s a video where Moin introduces us to his new friend and host in Martini, Switzerland. After a long journey on the road, Moin arrived exhausted in the enchanting town, only to realize that all hostels and affordable motels were booked. He was parked on the street, when after a five-minute conversation Moin got an invitation from a local to stay at his home.

The ignition
In 2005, Moin moved rather reluctantly from Lahore to California to start college. “My parents forced me to go to the U.S. for college,” he admits. He soon made friends and started loving life in the Bay area.

“After waking up, I’d go to dawn.com or Geo’s website,” said Moin in an interview on skype.

Everyday Moin would be rudely greeted with a headline bearing bad news. “Starting from Lal Masjid to the drones. You barely hear anything positive out of Pakistan.”

“I am not political in any way. I just wanted to tell the world that we Pakistanis are just regular people,” said Moin.

And one day while he was sitting with some friends it hit him. “I’m going to drive my bike from San Francisco to Pakistan,” he announced.

So started Moin’s mission. He worked two jobs, 7-days a week, and survived on ‘rice and ketchup’ to save up for the trip and to buy a bike and gear worthy of the journey.

“I didn’t make the facebook page or the website, till the 3rd or 4th day into the trip, I wasn’t expecting anything at all.”

Moin now has more than 5000 fans on his facebook page.

The journey

Moin’s Honda F4i’s tires have already touched concrete in the U.S., Canada, England, Scotland, Germany, Czech Republic, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, France, Italy, Slovenia, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania.

One of the key things keeping fans hooked to his journey on facebook, besides his skill to always find an Internet connection to upload pictures and videos, is his storytelling ability, which is playful and informative.

On the 15th day of his trip he uploaded some pictures from Yellowstone Park. One caption read, “I had to stop to take a picture with the Lulu Pass board, haha.”

“These (are) some pictures of the mud volcano in Yellowstone, it smelled of rotten eggs. I wonder why people drive thousands of miles just to smell rotten eggs. Well I too sadly rode 3000 miles to see this. Yes I reached my 3000 mile mark today!” exclaimed another one.

I asked him which place surprised him the most.

“The Selvio Pass in Italy…I have never seen anything like it,” replied Moin who started pinning up motorcycle posters in his room when he was just 7-years old.

“My love for Pakistan has always been there, nothing can match that, but motorcycles have been a big part of me and riding through the Swiss and Italian Alps was a dream since childhood. ”

Moin’s first time on a motorcycle is just as epic as his journey. At the age of eleven, a carpenter was working inside his house, when he decided to steal his motorcycle and cruise around Lahore.

“I didn’t know how to ride it,” admits Moin.

“I was somewhere in Cantt, it was summertime, (I had) no helmet, no gloves, nothing at all. I was wearing shorts and buzzing through cars. The way the wind hits your face. It’s just an amazing feeling,” he recalls with amazing detail.

“Since then it has only been about motorcycles and motorcycles,” he said with a grin.

The family

“My parents didn’t know anything about this trip.” Moin told his mom about his plan two days before he left San Francisco. When she found out how hard he had been working overtime to make it a reality, she backed him up.

When he crashed in Romania, he skyped his parents from the hospital, to show that he was okay. His mom suggested that he fly home, but his father was even more determined for him to continue.

“My dad’s first reaction was ‘so when are you getting a new bike, then’?”

“My parents have been amazingly supportive. Pakistani parents aren’t ‘supposed’ to be this supportive. (My parents) have proven this stereotype wrong,” he said proudly.

The agenda

Before Moin started his epic journey, he was worried about how some people in remote places in America would react to him being ‘from Pakistan.’

“I never had to face racism. San Francisco is very chill like that. But I had heard stories. I thought all they know about Pakistanis and Muslims is through Fox News. So, I was a little scared,” he admitted.

“But whoever I talked to, the first thing I’d say is ‘I am from Pakistan and I’m going from San Francisco to Lahore’.”

And that line, along with Moin’s charm seemed to do the trick at many places, even in British Columbia where he met a man named Phil Dawson at a gas station.

Phil invited Moin to his place. “His wife made us dinner. We had a bonfire. We watched movies together. I spent the night there,” narrates Moin.

“I think not only am I educating people I am being educated myself, anyone who can learn through me (and my experiences) that is the idea of this whole journey.”

And from the dozens of comments he gets on his videos and stories on facebook, it is clear he is changing perceptions in Pakistan.

“This is just amazing … there are no boundaries or countries or religions … just simple human beings. This is just the perfect example you want people to see, how we all can help each other to live happily, survive perils and support one another to grow,” commented one fan.

“The friends you are making are the bridge to (the) future. Congratulations and safe travels,” commented another.

After his crash, Moin posted a list of bike parts he needed on his facebook page. The response from his fans was tremendous. Bikers around the world pitched in to help him find parts. And in Pakistan many offered to raise money.

“Moin Bhai I can put posters of Moin Khan – ADifferentAgenda all over my university (University of Karachi) and ask people to make donation online.” offered Fowad Khan Niazi

Another 15-year-old fan from Dera Ismail Khan edited a video using Moin’s pictures from the trip to help raise funds.

I asked him if the journey has changed his perceptions.

“I don’t know why, but I had a bad image about Germans. Maybe because all I had heard about Germany was Hitler. This is how the media plays with you. I just thought Germans are really negative people,” he replied, “but Germans are the friendliest people I’ve met on this trip.”

“Some random people took me in.” He stayed with them in Germany for 5 days. “They took care of me like I was their little child, I was just amazing.”

They introduced Moin to their friends and even entertained him. “They took me to the BMW motorcycle museum and the motorcycle factory.”

Moin also got some stellar coverage in Germany press. DW-WORLD.DE even published an article on him in Urdu.

The road ahead

For Moin the best part of his trip lays ahead—Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, and then finally Pakistan.

“Before the journey started, the two places I was most excited and looking forward to were Iran and Balochistan in Pakistan.”

“Everyone talks trash about Iran and Balochistan, I think people just hear stories and get scared, I want to go check it out for myself.”

Iran is the only place Moin actually made an effort to get a visa for. He took a detour and flew to DC from New York in the first leg of his trip to go to the Iran embassy.

“I know it’s going to be very hard to get into Iran.” But Moin is excited about trying. I asked him if he was worried about travelling through the Iran-Balochistan border.

“Nothing is decided before hand in my life, and so nothing is decided before hand on
ADifferentAgenda either. I’ll cross Iran and go to the Baluchistan border, if they let me, I’ll ride through Balochistan but if not, then I’ll figure something out there.”

Moin says he never really saw much of Pakistan, besides Lahore. “Just an occasional trip to Islamabad and Murree from Lahore. And once on the train to Karachi.” So he is ‘stoked,’ about riding his bike through the country.

He showed me his helmet on skype. The asphalt marks ran deep. “If I didn’t have this on I would for sure be dead.”

“Whenever you crash it’s hard to get back on the bike, because that whole feeling comes back. But I’m really excited and cannot wait to hit the road again.”

After his crash, which from the pictures seems pretty horrific, his doctor told him to rest for two months.

“I have been breaking bones my whole life. And I know doctors tend to be extra-cautious,” said Moin.

“So I think I should be back on the road by the 20th of November.” He hopes to reach home by December 20th.

I asked him about the kind of a reception he was expecting on his arrival in Lahore.

“It will be awesome if some biker fans from Lahore can join me from Thokar (Niaz Baig) to my house in Cantt. There we can talk for some time,” said a rather excited Moin.

“Then everyone can go home and I can go inside with my mom parathas waiting for me, that’s really what I am looking for.”

Sahar Habib Ghazi interviewed Moin Khan and wrote this piece for Hosh media, an organization that aims to put youth voices on to the mainstream media in Pakistan. She hopes you will start following Moin Khan’s epic journey on “ADifferentAgenda”

This summer I met some fascinating ladies in Karachi. They belonged to an NGO called ‘Connect‘ which had come together in reaction to the 2010 floods that hit Sindh. Dr Talat Pasha, the brains behind the operation, had enlisted a few friends to help her set up mobile medical camps in the affected areas in July of 2010. After a few months of running between Karachi and interior Sindh, they soon realized they needed to cement their efforts. Some of the villages they visited were completely cut off, they had no paved roads and electricity before the floods. The devastation from the raging waters had swept their homes away too, they were clearly going to be set back even further.

So the ladies, most of whom are working women–executives, doctors, and entrepreneurs–between the ages of 40 and 60 decided to pool their efforts and resources to adopt 6 villages around Sujawal, to rebuild their homes, invest in a school, set up water pumps and light their lives for the first time with solar energy. Below is a video I made of their visit to Mohammad Urs, one of the villages they adopted in District Thatta for Hosh media and dawn.com

On a side note, I had never been so deep into Sindh, the furthest I had been was Hyderabad. So the journey itself, was a treat. The ladies were gracious hosts, inspiring and truly entertaining. I met Dr Talat Pasha a day before they planned to take their bi-monthly trip to their adopted villages. They were leaving the following day, a Monday at 5 am, so I had little time to get together video and audio equipment. I tried, but unfortunately it being a Sunday and Karachi’s ‘halaat’ being atrocious at that time, I couldn’t even manage to swing by and borrow a friend’s equipment. (So I shot the whole piece without a tripod or external audio equipment on a flip camera and a camcorder. Both are hi-def, so the quality wasn’t bad.) Coming back to the ‘halaat’ just three days before I had done a piece on Karachi violence for the NYT.
So I knew how bad things were, but nothing stopped these ladies from their mission. Dr Pasha said they had to make this trip, because Ramzan was coming up and it would be difficult to frequent the area then. So the Connect team arrived promptly to pick me up at 5 am in their coaster. Their punctuality, was the first thing that impressed me. The next was their high spirits that early in the morning. I entered a coaster full of laughing women. Through out the journey, they were chatting about politics, cracking jokes, making fun of each other, and just having a plain good time. As a precaution, as I often do when I travel to far-flung areas, I had taken my wedding rings and earrings off. I was surprised to see most of the ladies had their jewellery on. They weren’t even traveling with a gunman, but they said they had in the past, when the floods first hit and they were transporting large amounts of relief goods. This time they took the longer, but safer route leaving the city, but no one seemed to be worried about getting caught up in the bitter bloodshed taking place in Karachi. In fact, as soon as the last few were picked up–Mr Haider, a gentlemen who was helping them set up the solar energy units and a photographer–one of the ladies pulled out packed snacks for everyone.

After another hour so, another lady pulled out breakfast boxes. Steaming hot cups of tea followed. The Connect ladies had their logistics down. Once we got to the village, it was all business though. Mr Haider, the solar energy guy, went straight to check on the solar units, and some of the other ladies started distributing lunch to the students in the school. Dr Talat started pouring over accounts and paperwork from the school, while Shahida, the general-secretary set up a make-shift medical stall, to screen patients for Dr Talat. I was pretty much on my own hoping from one jhompri (hut) to the next, relying on the few men who speak Urdu in the village to fill in as interpreter when I spoke to the men and women in the village. I met a lot of pregnant women on their 4th or 5th child. Often times I was told that they were between 25-28 years old. When I told one family that I was 29, they didn’t believe me, honestly because I did look a lot younger than the women who had been popping out babies since their teens and living under the beating sun of Sindh. When I told one family, that I had been married for four years but have chosen to wait to start a family until my husband and I could afford to have a good life with children, the reply was “be patient, God will bless you soon, we will pray for you.” But after a few households of seeing those malnourished pregnant women, with toddlers and babies swarming around, I started to get preachy again. One soosur (father-in-law), who was staying back from the fields to watch over his three pregnant daughter-in-laws said, I was completely right, and that they were in this state because none of his daughter-in-laws had gone to school. But he said his female granddaughters were going to the school that Connect had rebuilt, so their was hope for his future generations. I didn’t like him putting the whole blame on his daughter-in-laws and I don’t know if he said, what he said, because he thought that was what I wanted to hear. But every time I do go into rural areas of Pakistan, it is stark reminder of what I believe to be Pakistan’s ‘biggest” problem, over-population. Yup, I said it, not terrorism, but over-population.
Other pictures I took at the village below.

To truly grasp the extent of NYPD’s “ethnic” surveillance, which started post 9/11 you must check out these documents on their “Moroccan Initiative”, made public by the AP.

Backgrounder here: NYPD ethnic tracking included citizens

The latest Flood devastation map on the NDMA site was put together by USAID. Could we be seeing some coordination and collaboration?!

PDF here: Affected Districts Flood 2011 Map

Also, startling news numbers:
6 million people affected
1.39 million houses destroyed
482, 899 residing in relief camps already

Source: NDMA Flood Report Sept 15 2011

If you want to help, these private organizations are doing a great job on the ground and are transparent in their operations.

http://www.sarelief.com/
http://www.karachirelief.org/

SA relief’s Pakistan chapter has also been documenting their work:

Another cool collaboration tool, if the short code gets broadcast that is, through twitter, no smart phones or internet needed:

2011 Knight Fellow Sahar Ghazi describes Hosh, her start-up that aims to creating a space in Pakistan’s mainstream media for young bloggers and online activists. Hosh, www.hoshmedia.org, hopes to give their voice more reach and impact in a country where Internet penetration is only 10 percent and two-thirds of the population is under 30.

To many Pakistanis the unimaginable happened on May 2nd. After years of mystery regarding his whereabouts, Osama bin Laden was not found in some cave in Afghanistan but in a cozy home within a military cantonment in Abbottabad.

24 year-old Anwar Naseem ventured out into his neighbourhood in Lahore to get some reactions on camera. Denial was a common theme.

Haqani, an accounting student from Islamabad writes, “When I heard the whole story from both my national media and the west’s media, one thing was clear, Osama bin Laden’s death is a false flag operation. Killing the most wanted man and then disposing his body in the blink of an eye with no evidence of his death other than Obama’s speech, was very hard to believe to be true.”

Wajiha Saqib, a senior at LUMS, went through the corridors of her university in search of her own answers with a camera.

Muhammad Anwar-ul-Haq, also from Lahore, rewinds back to September 11th, the London 7/7 bombings, and the 2008 Mumbai attacks and writes,

“I wonder why no one was worried about the lapse in security when a few men took on these security establishments, but everyone’s suddenly worried when the USA, the sole military super-power in the world, jams our radars along an already minimally monitored border (with respect to air-defense). This in my opinion is not the issue to worry about. The real point to ponder and raise questions about is, what was Osama doing smack in the middle of the Army’s hub and that too in a compound that had already been under surveillance some time back with regard to Al-Qaeda? The important question to ask right now is whether there was a certain degree of complicity on part of certain elements within our security establishment. If there was, then how does the Army plan to counter such people within its ranks? If not, then who will teach our intelligence agencies to focus on something worthwhile (as opposed to tapping phones from the parliament or funding right wing proxy parties to subvert the will of the people).”

Shahid Saeed a blogger originally from Rawalpindi, who is currently finishing is bachelors in electrical engineering from the U.S. writes,

“What goes on in the corridors of military power is a mystery to us. What guides their actions remains a complex web of calculations, strategic they say, often immoral, disgusting, irrational and suicidal in our eyes. They value their assets, they hedge their bets and they play both sides of the game and try to bluff the single most powerful country in the world, to which they have played as a near mercenary force for a fair time.

There are too many questions. Did we protect him? Did we give him refuge? Why would we do that? If not, did we ignore his presence? Are we this incompetent? Did the FIU never ask a question about a mysterious 7 kanal house with a three story building, built by settlers supposedly from Waziristan? Is the holy mother of all agencies so inept and useless that in the sweeps done around areas visited regularly by the Army Chief and the upper hierarchy, they never got suspicious of the house and its residents? How did he come to Abbottabad in the first place? Did he take a Rs. 70, 13-seater Hiace ride from Mansehra and stop off at the Baloch Regimental Center?

If not, then why did they allow a foreign power to come in and hunt him down? Did our forces coordinate and collaborate with the US on the raid? Why are they not speaking? It’s not as if it would not want to take credit for it. The logic of avoiding local terrorists’ wrath is just too pathetic, they already target us. Mullah Omar’s, Hekmatyar’s and Haqqani’s anger be damned, this is their protector we are talking about. It is stupid, nay imaginable, that our forces collaborated extensively and do not want to take credit for it. They would not risk inviting the wrath of the international media that they have called upon themselves today.”

Shahid Saeed, Wajiha Saqib, Anwar Naseem, Muhammad Anwar-ul-Haq and Ibtihaj Haqani contributed to this report produced by Hosh media, an organisation that aims to bring youth voices onto the mainstream media.

First off, apologies for neglecting my blog. The Knight Fellowship, my project Hosh media and this play, Betrayed I am playing a lead in, is taking up ALL my time.

I managed to squeeze in this profile piece of the amazing Sal Khan and his Khan academy.

MOUNTAIN VIEW: What if your child could get a free, world-class education from a man with an MBA from Harvard and three Bachelors degrees in Math, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Science from MIT?

Salman Khan is offering just that from his wooden desk made of antique telephone poles in the heart of Silicon Valley.

“My life gets to be this dude who gets to learn everything, and teach it,” said Khan smiling with a tablet and computer in front of him. “When I’m 80 (years old), it will be a lot more satisfying to think that a billion kids benefited.”

He is known as Sal in the valley, and Bill Gates famously called him “his favourite teacher.”

Forget classrooms, black boards, textbooks and teachers. Now students around the world, even in Pakistan, can learn everything from calculus, organic chemistry, finance and even the French revolution, by logging on to KhanAcademy.org through their Facebook or Gmail account.

The Khan way
“A lot of my own educational experience was spent frustrated with how information was conveyed in textbooks and lectures.” explains Khan on his website. “I felt like fascinating and intuitive concepts were almost intentionally being butchered into pages and pages of sleep-inducing text and monotonic, scripted lectures.”

In simple 10-15 minute videos, Khan’s friendly and excited voice leads you through concepts as he pens colourful illustrations on his tablet. After watching the videos, students can check to see if they have grasped the concepts by taking practice tests. As they pass practice tests they earn points and “badges worth bragging about”; by quickly and correctly answering five exercise problems in a row, students earn 100 points, and a Meteorite badge called “picking up steam,” and by quickly and correctly answering 42 exercise problems in a row, students can earn an Earth badge called sub-light speed. “(We are) adding layers to make learning more meaningful,” said Khan from behind his desk.

As students’ work on problems or watch videos, the Khan Academy tracks their progress and generates graphical data that each user can privately access. “The next step is, peer-to-peer learning; more immersive games, a shared white board.”

The site has even been piloted in two public schools in California, where 5th grade students log on to Khanacademy.org in class, and their teachers track their real-time progress from their desks. Whenever a student gets stuck on a problem, the teacher goes to their seat, and gives them individualised attention.

“In the future, people will look at this as the right way to learn” said Shantanu, Khan Academy’s President and Sal’s childhood friend. “We met at a (inter-school) Math competition.” They ended up at MIT for college, where they were roommates. “We used to compete for how many classes we could take.” Shantanu left his job at McKinsey to join Khan about a year ago.

How it started
Khan’s family is of Bengali origin and he grew up in New Orleans, which he says is “the one part of the US that looks like India: big roaches, humid weather, corrupt government and spicy food.”

Six years ago, Khan was working as a manager of a hedge fund in Boston, when he found out that some of his younger cousins were having trouble with Math in school. He started tutoring them long distance and soon realised that a lot of people were benefiting from his YouTube videos.

“I quit my day job as of September 2009 to work on this full-time and was digging into my savings until recently. In May 2010, some generous individuals gave large enough gifts for me to take a salary.”

Till date, Khan Academy has delivered 45.5 million lessons worldwide, now operates as a non-profit, and all of its site’s resources are available to anyone.

From the website: “it doesn’t matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. The Khan Academy’s materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge.”

So where does Pakistan come in?
“Where the content is right now, we can take people who have the literacy (in Pakistan) and make them more competitive with the middle class. We are ready for that,” said the dynamic teacher who is married to a Pakistani and even celebrated one of his wedding functions in Karachi.

Khan has already started tackling the highly competitive Indian Institute of Technology entrance exams called IITJEE. And he says he would like to get to past O-levels and A-levels exams as well, “at minimum (we can offer) tutoring back.”

Currently, students pay hundreds of thousands of rupees at tutoring centres across Pakistan to simply prepare themselves for these exams.

Khan and his team are also working on a translation project. According to Bilal Musharraf, their Dean of Translation, the goal is to have 1000 videos ready in 10 different languages in a year or two. And the project is mostly volunteer-driven. Khan academy offers best practices of “how-to-dub or re-do Sal’s existing videos, and volunteers take it from there. At present, someone in Japan is working on an Indonesian playlist and engineering students in Saudi Arabia are working on an Arabic playlist. In a matter of months, hundreds of videos have already been translated. You can now learn the Khan way in Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Polish Sinhalese, Tamil, Thai and Urdu.

But Khan doesn’t plan on stopping just at translation to create his global classroom. He wants a classroom, where there is more than one kind of narrative. “I am really eager to do those issues, (like) the 1971 War, Kashmir, and Palestine,” said Khan. “ I think there is an opportunity to really give balance. Invite thoughtful people on either side to discuss. I think it undermines government’s ability to give one narrative. It would be hugely powerful in undermining extreme views.”

Originally published April 26, 2011 on Dawn.com

In the end, it’s all about water. Greater Kashmir did a piece called Embezzling Energy?; detailing India’s power bank with Jammu & Kashmir as the main generator of the country’s hydropower. The state contributes one-third to India’s National Hydro-Power Company.

“Out of the 5295 MWs of its existing generation capacity, NHPC is drawing the highest booty of 1680 MWs of energy from Jammu and Kashmir, while rest of the country is contributing just 3615 MWs to the Corporation’s power kitty.”

Even though J & K is the largest contributor to power, the state faces frequent power-cuts.
“Most of the NHPC power projects are in joint venture with the respective starts governments, sharing energy on 50:50 basis, J&K is the only exception where the Corporation has to keep aside only 12 percent of electricity as royalty for the State.”

According the Indus Treaty, J & K only gets 12% of the generated power to meet its own needs, as a result:
” Ironically, while most of the hilly states like Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and North Eastern region have almost become power surplus, J&K is still generating struggling with pestering power cuts.”

And besides that India’s Wapda is rolling in money:
“NHPC has earned a whopping profit of Rs 1528 crore during the nine months ending December 2010, J&K continues to face huge resource crunch on account of power purchases.”

STANFORD, CA: “This may be charged, it may be difficult; this is a controversial and emotional issue for many people, but our intention is to have a civil discussion. I hope you will all approach it with that amount of civility,” said Thomas Blom Hansen, Director of the Center for South Asia.

So opened a two-day symposium that attempted to demystify the most militarized place in the world; “Grounding Kashmir,” brought South Asian scholars from around the globe to Stanford University.

“Our aim is to go beyond the narrow confines of (Indian and Pakistani) nationalistic discourse, “ said Nosheen Ali one of the organizers of the event. “There is a physical line of control, but there is also an intellectual line of control.”

The panel of speakers was dominated by Indian academics, who collectively portrayed a scathing critique of “fraudulent uneasy peace,” “humanitarianism used to subjugate,” and “heavy militarization” by the Indian state in Jammu and Kashmir.

Author of Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Islam, Rights and the History of Kashmir, Dr. Mridu Rai’s paper on “Folding Kashmir into Indian Imagination” attempted to take on the prevalence of “one narrative” in Indian society, a narrative dominated by the state line. Rai argued, “Kashmir should not be claimed through maps.”

Pakistani Historian Ayesha Jalal also echoed Rai’s assertion. “It is not about religion, it has been made about religion by Pakistan and India.” Dr Jalal who is currently a professor at Tufts University outlined her fascinating research that traces back the Kashmir and Punjab nexus, from 1931 to present-day. She showed how opinions have transformed in Punjab from wanting Kashmir to be a part of Pakistan, to wanting Kashmiris to decide their own fate.

Ironically, tensions that were foreseen in the opening speech did not breakout between Pakistanis and Indians on the stage or in the crowd, but between members of the audience from the Hindu-Pundit Diaspora who seemed very upset by the work of the speakers. After Dr. Suvir Kaul, from the University of Pennsylvania finished answering a question about his paper, which outlined what he called “fraudulent, uneasy peace” and how the Indian state continues to colonize the Kashmiri people. One man shouted from the back, “300 rupees they pay those boys to throw stones.” The speakers were accused of being “separatists” and under-representing the cause of the Hindu-Pundits. “I myself am a Pundit!” replied Kaul. “You want a tolerant India, I want a tolerant India; a search for that tolerant Indian space will begin and end in Kashmir”

The temperature of the room cooled down when Kashmiri Journalist Basharat Peer took centre stage. “By acknowledging people’s pain, we are not erasing our own pain, we are not competing here; human tragedy can co-exist. Everyone’s pain should be acknowledged.” Peer read haunting tales of anguish and torture from his book, Curfewed Nights, a front-line account of life and love in war-torn Kashmir.

In the Q and A, Peer spoke about two specific laws that the Kashmiri people were trying to overturn, both laws enabled Indian soldiers and policemen to operate with impunity in their region. “Last summer, Sameer Rah, an eight-year old protestor was beaten to death by Indian soldiers,” Peer argued Rah could not get justice under the current laws in the region.

“This summers protests was completely a youth movement,” said Peer talking about the intifada-style demonstrations that left over a hundred unarmed protesters dead. “The Hurriyat is doing nothing. The biggest mistake the Indian government made was that they set up the Hurriyat, then they knocked them down.”

Filmmaker Sanjay Kak showed us a rare documented glimpse into the life of the Kashmiri people, in Jashn-e-Azadi- How we celebrate Freedom.

“For someone who really follows events in Kashmir I was shocked at what I saw when I went there,” said Kak whose family once lived in Srinagar. “A personal humiliation got me started on this film, how ignorant, how ridiculous I felt.”

Jashn-e-Azadi starts with the camera taking the audience to Dal Lake in Srinagar; from the point of view of someone sitting on a boat you see iconic shots of the misty Kashmir valley artistically interspersed with a montage of war images.

“Any conversation about Kashmir is about Pakistan, Islamic Jihad and Pundits,” said the Indian filmmaker. But Jashn-e-Azadi jumped over these charged topics and went straight into what it is like for the Kashmiri people to be living under the barrel of a gun for the last two decades. Kak takes us to the “Martyrs Graveyard,” where hundreds of local fighters are buried; and to a village where a local theatre group put up a colourful play depicting how foreign forces have subjugated the Kashmiri people for centuries. Kak also showed how throughout the violence in the valley, the Indian state continues to promote the area as the ultimate tourism destination, building hotels and an extravagant golf course. Jashn-e-Azadi was released in 2007 and Kak has shown the film across India and at some international Film Festivals, he hopes to show it in Pakistan one-day too.

The conference wrapped with an eloquent young and female panel from both sides of the line of control.Dr Mona Bhan, an anthropologist from Srinagar presented her latest research, which documents how the “Save Dal Lake” campaign around her hometown has become a way to subjugate the local population. Bhan argued that while Indian conservationists target lake dwellers around Dal, evidence suggests most of the pollution comes from the dozens of new hotels that dump their sewage into the lake. “ Besides tourism, environmentalism has become a counterinsurgency strategy in Kashmir,” said Dr Bhan who currently teaches at DePauw University in Indiana, “in fact the US is looking to India, because it has led the charge in counterinsurgency strategy for years.”

Bhan also talked about some of her earlier post-conflict field work in Kargil, Ladakh. Her study of the trials and tribulations of the Ladakhis, who live on the Indian side of the line of control, was reflected in Dr. Nosheen Ali’s research about the people living on the Pakistani side of the line of control. “It is not grotesque violence, but suspicion that haunts the people of Gilgit-Baltistan.” Ali who received her PhD from Cornell University in Sociology and did her research in Gilgit-Baltistan argues that the area may be miles away from the Kashmir conflict, but its people live under heavy militarization and are ruled by the Pakistani state through emotional regulation by producing suspicion and loyalty. “Every third person there is a potential spy,” asserted Ali. “Despite the colonial treatment by the Pakistan state, most people in Gilgit-Baltistan remain intensely patriotic. The region is the only territory in Pakistan that actually fought a war to become part of Pakistan, and hundreds of soldiers from the region have since sacrificed their lives while serving in the Pakistani army.”

Both Bhan and Ali’s research focused on the affects the conflict has had on the lives of communities within and around the Kashmir Valley. As they read out excerpts from interviews they conducted in Pakistani and Indian Kashmir, it became clear that this very under-studied area desperately needed to be explored, because in the words of Sanjay Kak, “domination does not mean victory.”

Published www.dawn.com, March 11, 2011