The piece below should be in the Onion or get a rotten tomato. For real, the USAID has made a grant of $20 million to Rafi Peer Theater group to create a local version of Sesame Street where the setting is a rural village and the protagonist a spirited little girl named Rani.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13015768
BBC quotes Imran Peerzada. "She will represent what little girls have to go through in this gender-biased society...her journey would inevitably touch on Pakistan's ongoing fight with militancy, but would not directly refer to religion."
"We don't want to label children‚" Peerzada continued. "The basic learning tools of literacy‚ numeracy‚ hygiene‚ and healthy eating have to be in place first."But why does one need $20 million to make culturally specific Urdu version of a show? These are very expensive episodes and must be studded with diamonds. A cost breakdown would be intriguing to audit.
Moreover, if the basic purpose is educating children on health and skills, then shouldn't that come through schools which are a shambles in rural areas? How many schools can you run with this money? How many teachers can you train and pay? Was there a study done of the impact of such programming, which despite its nominally good message and educational value, would take months and years to seep in (incidentally) versus hand-on, say, schooling?
When we were doing flood relief work in parts of Sajawal as part of the SLRC, we would see villages on both sides of the road. Some had electricity. Occasionally, in one of the traditional mud homes, you'd even see a TV set. It is possible that the village children gather around and learn a thing or two from Cookie Monster. But the real problems run deeper. Children in these villages have to go to Thatta/Makli for schooling after Grade 5. For those without resources, this 15 km travel implied an end to education. Only the more privileged boys made the trek to school after fifth. Education is a state of emergency.
In that context of real educational disabilities, the premise that a brave and daring girl will somehow curb militancy and positively impact education is flawed. Its the western world's fantasy of how the world turns. The war on Afghanistan liberated women. Fiction imitates this fantasy and you see book after book popularizing the myth of the women (and even men) enduring and rising above religious patriarchy with no commentary on how continued war and hunger are bad for women and children too.
In 2009, SDPI did a study where they suggested connections between militancy and food insecurity. 48.6 % of Pakistan's population doesn't have access to sufficient food. FATA has the highest percentage of food insecure people (67.7%) and a woeful 6.2 % female literacy followed by Baluchistan. The 10 most food insecure districts include Dera Bugti, Musa Khel, Upper Dir, North Waziristan, Kohistan, Muhmand, Dalbidin, South Waziristan, Orakzai, and Panjgur. According to SDPI, there is a connection between food insecurity and literacy and health. "Negative coping strategies include reducing expenditure on health and education." Households in FATA are spending 67% of household income on food items. In Sindh, 62% And the situation is only getting worse as we move towards corporate farming and no fix to landlessness and sharecropping. Food deficit districts have increased from 62% in 2003 to 76% in 2009. Food inflation in Pakistan reached its peak in 2007-08 when it soared to 36%. Pakistan is ranked 11th at ‘extreme risk’ on the Food Security Risk Index - worse off than India and Bangladesh.
For more details see:
http://www.sdpi.org/food-insecurity/food%20insecurity%20in%20Pakistan%202009%20.pdf
So its convoluted logic at best that a soft drone program will softly wean us off militancy when the heart of the matter is the stomach.
In that light donating such a large sum of money to one group seems an unjustified and unreasonable expenditure, however creditable their credentials and talents. At the end of the day, how many jobs will this project create? How many mouths will it feed? How many elementary school breakfasts will it fund? How many actual graduates will it create? With money like this you will have people scrambling for the dough -- pimping Elmo.
Hearsay has it that the theater group has hired one lonesome person to travel to remote parts where there is no access to TV and he will show the program on his one dusty laptop. I hope he got a fast car too because it will be long and lonely travels for him.
If USAID can not build schools, can they at least implement a school breakfast program for five years with this money and watch the indicators? Feed the kids eggs and apples, adapt a holistic approach and stop talking about gender oppression as if it has nothing to do with the hunger and the harder issues of drone warfare, and the rural dis-empowerment.
I mean we need more than the letter of the day, folk, and the benefits of hand sanitizer.
4 comments:
What you mentioned is extremely correct but the point is development of a character is far more superior than worldly wishes! These programmes do reform our children and I'm a live experience to that! But still i think 20 million $ is far from normal Pakistani needs and if this money is used without corruption miracle is expected to happen!
exactly my thoughts!
Hello,
Just wanted to let you know that I left a massive 3 part comment on your ET blog post on why I believe you have the wrong end of the stick on this one and why I think it may be one of the best things to happen in a long time in terms of USAID programs.
The ET mods havent approved it yet. If they have issues for some reason Ill post here but for now I think its better to keep our discussion in one place. I look forward to your reply.
Regards,
IZ
Misanthrope, IZ, who are you anyway..?
you know I wrote a response and then accidentally deleted it.
here is the gist.
I am not disagreeing with most of your comments…however, the critique, which is mine, remains as follows:
there must be accountability and transparency. I am interested in seeing how these funds are used, and this is a huge amount of money.
ideally, purported beneficiaries should be in the loop.
and for that matter, there should be transparency in even how Aurat uses them. I am no expert on NGOs and funding, but there is a huge problem in this country on how NGOS and organizations become donor driven and not need driven, and in fact disconnected from impact on the ground.
then your assessment of causation and correlation is much ado about nothing. the quoted study in fact says there are many root causes of militancy. there is link with hunger, thats all. its not scientific. But it does not take a genius to figure that you take care of peoples’ needs – food, education, health – there will be less discontent.
then the value of Sesame street. it has value. But the studies you cite are all US based and we are talking about a totally different socio economic and political landscape here in Thar, FATA, etc. Many of the social safety nets present in (even) america do not exist here. people do not have access to er/govt funded health care and there is increasing desperation around food.
I find it silly to debate the rights of the child – from a human rights perspective no one will deny they must be fed, educated, recognized, respected, allowed to grow spiritually and intellectually through constantly evolving education and entertainment…
But look, food first. I am going to reassert. Free breakfast in all government schools for $18 million for as long as that lasts.. for $2 million, make a kick ass sesame street by someone who bids in an open bidding process. How is that an urban elite mindset?
if you have worked in rural areas you will know in one day that the benefits of a show aside — people do not have the necessary tools and economic empowerment to implement change. In Sajawal (I keep bringing that up because that is my experience) ALL children in one particular village were addicted to ghutka. Yes, ideally a show that will keep talking about how ghutka causes cancer will be good. But people also need clinics and social workers – students also need good education that will give them meaningful academic and social outlooks and activities. children are addicted due to boredom and lack of basic needs. Now you can dismiss that and say that that is the government’s job and does not mean a sesame street can not and should not be created till the cows come home. So be it!
But then, cut out the corruption and you will see change. corruption as in a majority of the chunk being siphoned back, or the rest going to fund extravagant lifestyle. Then, lets have it all outs – the facts. How many people have they hired? How EXACTLY will the money be used?
My role in this blog is not to make baseless accusations, or deny people rights to watch a funky awesome educational show. It is the opposite. It is to ask people to inform themselves, and then engage in public debate read, write, and participate in public hearings where possible, and bring democracy back.
We have lost that culture with the breakdown of our social systems since the 80s and we need to build that.
the rest is details..
also, I am getting fatigued, and this is my last response. If you have something mind blowing to say, please write a blog about it.
thanks for hanging in there and taking such an interest in the issue…
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