Pakistani students will be marching for their rights in over a dozen cities in Pakistan today. Here is why they are right to be angry & why it is essential that the whole country listens to their demands. Thread. #StudentsSolidarityMarch
Let’s start w/ some honesty: Pakistani students have it pretty bad. Pakistan boasts one of the worst education systems in the world, a rot that runs all the way from primary to higher education levels, with no meaningful reform attempts by any government. #StudentsSolidarityMarch
Our dubious education records include the world’s 2nd highest number of out-of-school children (22.8m), one of the highest school dropout rates (50% of all primary school students), & one of the lowest female literacy rates (48%) in the world.
The rot extends to higher education. Pakistan spends a paltry 0.3% of its GDP on higher education, ensuring that less than 9% of students have access to it. We have just 173 public+private HEIs for over 120 million people under 30 & over 55% of our districts have no universities.
Our poor HE quality is reflected in global rankings. No Pakistani university features in the world’s top 200, while only 3 are in the top 800. The QS HE system rankings in 2018 placed Pakistan last out of 50 countries surveyed (26 places below India). tribune.com.pk/story/1106840/…
The principal responsibility for this lies with the Pakistani state, which has never taken responsibility for educating its students (not recognizing even primary education as a state duty until 2010) & has increasingly relegated responsibility for education to the private sector
State apathy & neoliberalization has continued unabated. In 2017, over 60% of the HEC development budget was diverted to non-education projects, leaving only Rs. 8.4b for higher education (one of the lowest allocations since 2004). The PTI govt cut the budget by 14% for 2018-19.
Funding cuts at HEC have meant a halt to the development of important programs relied on by students & faculty, from hostels & transport to research, scholarships & libraries. Tellingly, the number of scholars sent abroad for PhDs shrunk from 1000 in 2008 to 250 in 2017.
The decay goes beyond funding gaps. Pakistani universities universally fail to impart the most critical component of a quality education – critical thinking. Instead, over the decades, our universities have become increasingly violently hostile to critical thought & expression.
That Pakistan’s curriculum has long engendered retrogression is well known, documented by folks like KK Aziz & Ziauddin Sardar. For decades, our textbooks have misrepresented history & science, demonized minorities, glorified war & vilified critical thinkers as traitors.
However, in recent years, things have taken a more violent turn. Between 2013-16, Scholars At Risk documented 3 mass attacks on Pakistani uni campuses & 11 targeted attacks on scholars (many of them having to do with blasphemy accusations), leading to 110 deaths & 143 injuries.
This violence is in addition to broader crackdowns on critical thought, be it abductions of professors like Salman Haider, dismissals of academics like Ammar Ali Jan & forced censorship of any mildly critical academic discussion for being ‘anti-state’. #StudentsSolidarityMarch
For universities in Balochistan and Sindh, the policing of thought & politics is enforced by armed Rangers on campus, a grim reminder of how a national security mindset continues to hold sway over educational imperatives.
Thought control on campuses is a direct result of state/establishment imperatives. In 2014, HEC released a circular prohibiting educational content that ‘challenged the ideology of Pakistan’ in universities. As movements like PTM have grown since, so too has such censorship.
Needless to say, this assault on even basic academic freedoms is central to why Pakistan’s educational institutions continue to produce such low-quality scholarship. No education system in the world can progress with such stifling, securitized restrictions on speech & inquiry.
Rather than address the ideological rot, Pakistani universities continue to remain exclusively obsessed w/ policing students’ morality. Every other month, a varsity releases a policy pushing segregation, sexism, medieval moral codes or infantilization of students (esp women).
Perhaps the most telling sign of the system's bankruptcy is how students have been legally barred from even protesting these problems through the 35-yr old student union ban, while being fed the laughable delusion that this criminalization of student action is in their interests.
Earlier, unions used to provide a platform for students to articulate their greivances & have a say in university policies & decision-making. They allowed space for non-violent debate & enabled multi-ethnic & multi-religious coalitions among students from different backgrounds
The ban on unions meant the ties the representative spaces created among students across ethnic, religious & gender lines also withered away. This is central to why inter-ethnic segregation & violence on campuses has actually increased in the years since. #StudentsSolidarityMarch
Of course, as everyone knows, the ban on student politics is not uniformly applied. Rightwing groups like IJT (& other groups patronized by ruling parties) have been allowed to flourish & act as the armed enforcers of the state & uni administrations to crush dissent.
Conservatives love pointing to present-day campus violence to justify the student union ban – ignoring the fact that these scuffles take place among students who’ve never witnessed a student union in their life nor experienced a space for non-violent representative politics.
Conservatives can never explain why the best varsities in the world (from Harvard to Oxford) to the best in India (from JNU to Hyderabad, Aligarh) consist of highly-unionized & active student bodies, while our 'controlled' campuses are among the world's most violent & sterile.
Anti-union sentiments are predicated on the same authoritarian exceptionalism that long claimed 'Pakistan isn't ready’ for democracy. Today, the same kind of people will claim BS like Pakistani students ‘are inherently violent’ & ‘not fit’ for unionization.
The Pakistani state’s paranoid, militarized, authoritarian approach to education has left its campuses violent, impoverished & intellectually sterile, and its students brutalized, apathetic & bereft of opportunity. More of the same will not work anymore. #StudentsSolidarityMarch
Pakistani students need a new deal. One that prioritizes universal public education, affirmative action for the less privileged, freedom of thought & critical inquiry, humane & scientifically-sound curricula, & religious, ethnic & linguistic pluralism. #StudentsSolidarityMarch
This isnt just important for students but for Pakistan's future. If we want to avoid a descent into fascist catastrophe & economic & environmental ruin, we must invest in & empower our students to think & act for themselves. We are at this grim impasse today b/c we chose not to.
To close, in the students' own words, here is their open letter to Prime Minister @ImranKhanPTI, a reasoned appeal for the recognition of rights long-denied. Here's hoping he & the powers-that-be see to reason before it is too late. #StudentsSolidarityMarch 
