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Opinion: Imposing an arbitrary national language would only divide Pakistan further

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Sep 2016 10:17:17 +0000

For a country seven decades old, Pakistan is dealing with a surprisingly fundamental political and cultural problem: a struggle over what language to use for government.

̽��ֱ��Supreme Court has ordered the government to use the constitutionally-mandated national language, Urdu, in place of English in the many contexts where English is currently used. (Ironically, the court’s order was itself written in English.) Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has declared his enthusiasm for the transition to Urdu, and a committee was constituted to monitor its progress.

But is imposed monolingualism a good fit for South Asia – or does it in fact follow a very Eurocentric idea of how a nation-state should work?

This discussion has been rumbling on and off ever since India and Pakistan achieved independence. Both of their post-colonial constitutions required that after 15 years, English should be officially replaced by Urdu and Hindi respectively, but both countries eventually side-stepped the requirement. Pakistan continued to use English without comment alongside Urdu; India declared it a “subsidiary official language”, symbolically inferior to Hindi but nonetheless still recognised.

Today, the problem comes in how narrowly Urdu and Hindi are defined by the bodies tasked with monitoring and developing the official languages.

Pakistan’s National Language Promotion Department (formerly the National Language Authority) and India’s Department of Official Language both have a reputation for filling their respective languages with clunky neologisms. These are used to avoid common English loanwords; Hindi ones are drawn largely from Sanskrit, and Urdu’s largely from Arabic and Persian.

̽��ֱ��people who complain about the language policy aren’t necessarily trying to maintain their English-speaking privilege; there really are genuine questions about the character of the official language. If its speakers commonly use words that aren’t recognised by governmental language bodies, is it right to have a two-track system in which there is a governmental variety of a language and very different one that normal people use?

Taking a hard line against English as a colonial language makes little sense decades after independence, especially when it has become the language of international business and when English loanwords have become embedded in people’s everyday usage in other South Asian languages. And looking back over history, this is a very recent argument anyway.

̽��ֱ��scorched-earth cultural politics of imposing a national language never took hold in the subcontinent before modern India and Pakistan came into being. Persian was the apex language during Mughal times and well into the era of British colonial rule, but it never overwhelmed the subcontinent’s longstanding linguistic diversity.

Many modern historians never think to question the colonial line that Persian was “thoroughly debasing and worthless” in India, but this is a fiction; I myself wrote an entire book arguing against the idea that Persian was a foreign imposition that patriotic Indians never really embraced. In reality, people used the languages available to them, making allowances for difference and freely taking words from other languages.

It was recognised, as the old Hindi saying has it, that in South Asia “kos kos par bhasha badle, do kos par pani” or “the language changes every mile, and the taste of the water every two miles”.

Overridden and overwhelmed

In Europe, where national languages are largely a foregone conclusion, we tend to forget how brutal and undemocratic their imposition was.

Languages other than English, notably Irish and Welsh, were repressed across the British Isles in early modern times. ̽��ֱ��1536 Welsh Act of Union, for example, excluded Welsh speakers from all government posts.

Across the English Channel, the adoption of standard French involved centuries of violent confrontation with Occitan and Breton speakers. ̽��ֱ��1539 Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, which replaced Latin with French in legal documents, has often been read as an act of popular liberation from the dead hand of Latin, but from the minority-language perspective it was a disaster; whereas all linguistic communities had previously used the same Latin documents, now only one community was represented.

But while Europe’s worst battles over minority and non-standard languages have been largely swept under the rug in recent centuries, radically multilingual India and Pakistan simply don’t have enough rug to do the same. An unintended consequence of decolonisation has been an almost colonial imposition of artificial, non-colloquial registers of Hindi and Urdu by Indian and Pakistani elites, who are concerned that without a unifying national language their nations will face devastating social and political disintegration.

This is misguided. Instead of repeating some of the unsavoury linguistic nationalism of early modern Europe, these elites should celebrate the wide variation in usage. They should acknowledge the ways Hindi and Urdu mix with languages like English and Punjabi, and make allowances for the complexity of language in society.

Far too little attention is routinely paid to how the citizens themselves might wish to speak. Nothing illustrates this more poignantly than a 1951 speech by the Aga Khan, in which he argued that the only possible national language for the new Islamic Republic of Pakistan could be Arabic. While he addressed the point that Urdu was the mother tongue of a tiny minority of Pakistanis and thus apparently unsuitable as a national language, he did not acknowledge the undeniable fact that Arabic was the mother tongue of precisely 0% of Pakistanis.

And of course, he gave the speech in English.

Arthur Dudney, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Arthur Dudney (Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies) discusses Pakistan's struggle over what language to use for government.

DFID - UK Department for International Development

Getting girls into school in Pakistan's Punjab region

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Opinion: Confronting the Taliban – an educational encounter

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Mar 2016 15:23:46 +0000

In a country that has five million children out of school (three million of them girls) it may seem incongruous to prioritise higher education. But prestigious higher education institutions, such as Edwardes College in Peshawar – where I was principal from 2006-2010 – are capable of producing the calibre of leaders able to address the full range of educational issues.

Edwardes College, affiliated to the ̽��ֱ�� of Peshawar, is one of a number of higher education institutions in south Asia founded a hundred or more years ago by British administrators and missionaries. Although conceived by the utilitarian administrators of the Raj as the creator of interpreters between themselves and “those whom we govern” – to quote the imperious Lord Macaulay – it initially taught in the local vernaculars and have maintained well above average academic standards. ̽��ֱ��College's progressive ethos and international contacts have enabled them to take on board the education of women and disadvantaged minorities more readily than comparable educational institutions, and they have consistently trained some of the most outstanding leaders from the south Asian region.

In the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly the North-West Frontier Province) Edwardes College was the first men’s college to admit women, the first of whom was admitted to the computer science department. By the time I joined in 2006 about 10% of 2000 students were women, and there was a somewhat higher proportion of women lecturers. By the time I left both proportions were significantly higher, and the college boasted a well-equipped women’s centre. When some of the more conservative professors complained about my preoccupation with women’s participation my answer was always in terms of the examination results: at the end of my fourth and final year the 14% of the total student body who were women were carrying off 53% of the top academic prizes.

There are considerable differences between the social situations of women in different parts of the Pakistan/Afghan region. Benazir Bhutto, from a rich landowning family in Sindh, was not only prime minister of Pakistan twice but, as an undergraduate at Oxford ̽��ֱ��, was president of the Oxford Union Society. However, in Pashtun society, on both sides of the border, women are unlikely to achieve such distinction; their literacy rate is much lower than that of men, and many are severely discriminated against. They can vote in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, but may be prevented from doing so by their menfolk and public opinion. Child marriage was made illegal in Pakistan in 2000 but continues in some places.

̽��ֱ��Taliban’s opposition to women’s education (or sometimes only to co-education) was aggravated during the late 1970s and 1980s when General Zia-ul-Haq became president of Pakistan and imposed a rigid version of Sharia law. In some respects this was surprising because Zia’s early years had been spent as a student in the liberal and cosmopolitan atmosphere of St. Stephen’s College in Delhi. With funds from Saudi Arabia he constructed large numbers of madrasas along the Pakistan/Afghan border, populating them with imported Wahabi mullahs. Such policies paved the way for Taliban militants from Afghanistan to find refuge in these same tribal border regions from which they could plan campaigns inside both countries.

Peshawar bore the brunt of a furious backlash by Taliban militants against “soft” targets during much of my tenure as Edwardes College principal. What happened recently in Paris happened on a monthly basis with much the same number of casualties. ̽��ֱ��international press only began to pay attention to these in September 2013 when suicide bombers killed over a hundred worshippers at All Saints’ Church (four were my own former students). Then in December 2014 a hundred and forty children were shot to death at the Army Public School in Peshawar. ̽��ֱ��first incident was stated by the Taliban to be a response to US drone attacks in the tribal areas, the second a reaction to Army atrocities in Waziristan.

One of the most effective counters to terrorism is quality education which offers hope and employment to the disenfranchised youth in places such as these border areas of Pakistan. A few years ago the former Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Haroon Ahmed, collaborated with General Musharraf and Atta ur Rahman, the distinguished Pakistani chemist, to set up several technological and vocational universities in Pakistan with funding and personnel from several countries, which, unfortunately, did not include the UK. This programme collapsed when General Musharraf left office, but it is an example of the kind of initiative which could help to redress the current imbalances of opportunity between rich industrial countries and their poorer counterparts.

On the basis of my educational experiences in Pakistan such collaborative activities will not lead to a lowering of standards – possibly even the contrary – and will equip and encourage potential leaders (and especially women) from unstable areas to rectify the unjust imbalances which fuel much current domestic and international violence.

David L. Gosling's new book, Frontier of Fear: Confronting the Taliban on Pakistan’s Border, is now available, published by London, IB Tauris ( ̽��ֱ��Radcliffe Press), 2016.

Dr Gosling will launch the book at an event in Magdalene College, with an introduction by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, on Wednesday 9 March at 6:00pm. All welcome.

Inset images: David Gosling at Edwardes College (David Gosling); Taliban ammunition (Resolute Support Media).

Dr David Gosling (Faculty of Divinity) discusses his time on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, his encounters with the Taliban and why education is the best weapon against terrorism.

One of the most effective counters to terrorism is quality education which offers hope and employment to the disenfranchised youth in places such as these border areas of Pakistan

David Gosling

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Pakistan schoolgirl

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Earthquake rocks Afghanistan and Pakistan – an area prone to magnitude 7 quakes

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 12:35:31 +0000

A devastating earthquake struck the Hindu Kush region of north-east Afghanistan just after lunchtime on October 26, rocking communities as far away as Tajikistan, Pakistan and even India. A devastating earthquake struck the Hindu Kush region of north-east Afghanistan just after lunchtime on October 26, rocking communities as far away as Tajikistan, Pakistan and even India.

̽��ֱ��strong quake, estimated at magnitude 7.5 by the US Geological Survey (USGS), had its origins more than 200km deep beneath Earth’s surface, and was felt as strong shaking across a very wide area. Casualties have been reported from across the region, with widespread landslips causing potential further damage to infrastructure.

So far it has been reported that 150 people have died, but this number is likely to rise.

̽��ֱ��quake is the second large shake to hit the Alpine-Himalayan earthquake belt this year, following the one that devastated Nepal in April. A region stretching from the Mediterranean through Anatolia, Iran and Central Asia into the mountains of South-East Asia, the Alpine-Himalayan belt is the home of around a fifth of the world’s largest earthquakes.

Tectonic plates collide. LennyWikipedia~commonswiki, CC BY-SA

̽��ֱ��earthquake was driven by collision between the Eurasian tectonic plate to the north and the Indian plate to the south. ̽��ֱ��area marks the scar of the closure of an ancient ocean, the Thethys, which once separated the continents of Gondwana, including most of the landmasses in today’s southern hemisphere, and Laurasia, made up of most of the countries that are today in the northern hemisphere.

̽��ֱ��Hindu Kush has experienced many such earthquakes before today, and this latest appears to follow closely the pattern of those of the past. Preliminary analysis by the USGS indicates that it was caused by a deep fault in which rocks thrust past each other instantaneously. They point out that seven earthquakes of magnitude 7 or more have hit within 250km of the current earthquake over the past century. Most recently the magnitude 7.4 earthquake, some 20km west of the latest event, killed over 150 people in March 2002.

This type of deep fault, a near-vertical a thrust fault, is a process that has previously been associated with the tearing off of sections of ancient ocean floor sinking into the Earth’s mantle beneath today’s continent. Researchers have previously suggested that earthquakes in the Hindu Kush can be caused by the break off of strips of such slabs, stretching and tearing free, on geological time scales, as they fall deep into the mantle.

Whatever the geological triggers for the quake, grieving communities will now be gathering themselves together and guarding against the inevitable aftershocks. With increased understanding of the risks that Earth poses along this seismic belt, it is important to be aware and prepare for future large earthquakes. If buildings are not to be destroyed time and again, it is important to adopt and adhere to construction and planning codes. A key step in promoting legal enforcement is educating the community about the risks, as well as how to respond as safely as possible during an earthquake.

Efforts such as the “Earthquakes without Frontiers” continue to highlight the risks of earthquakes, and have drawn attention to the tectonic forces that stand poised to strike along Tethys’ former shores.

Simon Redfern, Professor in Earth Sciences, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Professor Simon Redfern (Department of Earth Sciences) discusses the devastating earthquake that struck Afghanistan on October 26 and the geological triggers that caused it.

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Topography of Hindu Kush.

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Education that adds up

lw355 — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 08:17:10 +0000

It’s a numbers game. Three million households, seven million children, 30,000 volunteers, and a decade of assessing the basic reading and maths abilities of 3–16-year olds across India.

This is the size of the largest non-governmental survey of the state of Indian education ever conducted, and it’s a key source of information for communities and policymakers on children’s learning outcomes available in India today. ̽��ֱ��Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) is all the more impressive given the deceptive simplicity and fundamental importance of the question it seeks to answer: how many children are learning the basics in mathematics and reading?

But the numbers have to be huge given what’s at stake. ̽��ֱ��education system in India is in crisis; in rural areas, fewer than one in five poor children of around 11 years of age have even the most basic of literacy and numeracy skills, although most have been in school for five years. And it’s a pattern echoed worldwide in what UNESCO has declared “a global learning crisis” – even after going to school, 250 million children globally cannot read, write or count.

“What’s the point in an education if children emerge after years in school without the skills they need?” says Professor Pauline Rose from Cambridge’s Faculty of Education, whose team collaborates with the organisation in India responsible for ASER. “ ̽��ֱ��rhetoric about education used to be about giving children access to school but now it must also be about making sure they learn what they need to learn once they are there.”

Rose was previously Director of UNESCO’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report. In 2014, the Report assembled the first evidence on the scale of the education crisis. “There was already a debate rumbling. It was becoming clear that increasing the number of children enrolling in school was not enough. But the report brought the evidence into one place. That number of 250 million children without basic skills slaps you in the face – you can’t ignore it. It’s also an entry point to understanding why we have got to this situation and what we can do about it.”

Rose leads Cambridge’s Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre, which has highlighted some of the factors that limit children’s learning in India and Pakistan. Among them are an over-ambitious curriculum that leaves children behind and a lack of training and support for teachers, who may themselves be the product of a poor education.

Now the Centre has been awarded funding by the Department for International Development (DFID) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to look at ways to improve the effectiveness of teaching quality in India and Pakistan.

“Education increases opportunities in life, it can pull people out of poverty, with better jobs and higher wages; for girls, education often results in delaying marriage and having fewer children, who as a result are healthier,” she explains. “Nationally, a young, educated workforce can transform the wealth of a country.”

India has made a significant investment in schooling over the past decade, achieving near universal enrolment in primary education. According to government figures, around 195 million children are currently in primary school. However, the question of how effective is the teaching within the classroom has largely been overlooked.

Over the past few months, Rose and Dr Ben Alcott have been using the ASER datasets, covering all of rural India, to identify the extent to which children are learning and who in particular is being left behind.

“Among the most disadvantaged girls, fewer than 10% are learning by the time they should have had five years in school,” says Rose. “Some aren’t learning because they’ve dropped out of school, others because of the poor quality of education. Governments, schools and teachers have tended to focus on the more advantaged, able children. But to close educational inequalities, they must focus on the disadvantaged, whether it’s by poverty, gender, caste or disability.”

Rose and Alcott suggest five key steps: encourage children to start school as young as possible; set the curriculum at the right pace for the majority of learners, not the minority of able learners; train teachers to teach the most disadvantaged learners; provide schools with appropriate textbooks in the right language; and hold schools and policy makers accountable for improving learning outcomes for those who would otherwise be left behind.

Of course, improving the quality of education requires a better understanding of what is actually going on in the classroom. In the newly funded ESRC–DFID programme, Rose, Professor Anna Vignoles and Dr Nidhi Singal are working with an independent education research group in India – Collaborative Research and Dissemination (CORD) – to create a new dataset that will follow children through their learning experience, from home to school.

Singal’s focus is on children with disabilities: “In many cases, children with disabilities are given access to mainstream school just for ‘socialisation purposes' – there’s an assumption that they are not there to learn.

“My reason for researching what happens to children with disabilities in school is not only to do with issues around social justice and human rights, but also because problems will be magnified for the most marginalised of the marginalised – if teaching can be more effective for this group then it can respond to the needs of all disadvantaged children.”

̽��ֱ��research will assess children both in the household and in schools, testing their basic skills on a yearly basis. ̽��ֱ��aim is to identify what makes a difference to learning, and to understand the problems teachers face and the support they need.

“There’s a big debate on how the global Sustainable Development Goal of all children learning by 2030 can be achieved,” adds Rose. “This project will help understand what we need to do to make sure we are not failing children who are coming from some of the most disadvantaged of backgrounds.”

Will governments take notice? “I don’t think we as researchers can always go knocking on doors and say look at our evidence. But I do think that, through the networks that CORD and ASER have, this research can have an influence. These partnerships are really central to what we do: it’s no good us sitting here doing all this wonderful research if it’s not actually changing anything for children’s experiences on the ground.”

As part of the Festival of Ideas and WOW Cambridge, Pauline Rose is participating in a panel discussion on this topic with Philippa Lei from the Malala Fund on October 27. Visit http://www.equality.admin.cam.ac.uk/events/school for more information.

We are in the midst of a “global learning crisis” according to UNESCO, with too many children worldwide learning little or nothing at school. A new research programme focusing on India and Pakistan aims to understand what needs to be done to ensure that education adds up.

That number of 250 million children without basic skills slaps you in the face – you can’t ignore it.

Pauline Rose

Global Partnership for Education

India: Teaching Girls

Let Them Learn

Professor Pauline Rose will take part in discussion hosted by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Georgetown ̽��ֱ�� in Washington DC on 30 November 2015 to follow up on Michelle Obama’s announcement of a UK-US initiative as part of the Let Girls Learn campaign.

̽��ֱ��event will bring together key stakeholders to identify the biggest challenges to girls’ education in conflict settings, with the aim of developing a research agenda that will provide policymakers with evidence-based policy recommendations.

Specifically, during the First Lady’s visit to the UK in June 2015, the USA and UK committed to building an evidence-base around increasing access to education and enhancing learning for girls in conflict and crisis situations, including in refugee and internally displaced person settings. ̽��ֱ��event will be hosted by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Vice Chancellor Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz and Ambassador Melanne Verveer.

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Decline of Bronze Age ‘megacities’ linked to climate change

lw355 — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 12:57:09 +0000

Scientists have demonstrated that an abrupt weakening of the summer monsoon affected northwest India 4,100 years ago. ̽��ֱ��resulting drought coincided with the beginning of the decline of the metropolis-building Indus Civilisation, which spanned present-day Pakistan and India, suggesting that climate change could be why many of the major cities of the civilisation were abandoned.

̽��ֱ��research, reported this week in the journal Geology, involved the collection of snail shells preserved in the sediments of an ancient lake bed. By analysing the oxygen isotopes in the shells, the scientists were able to tell how much rain fell in the lake where the snails lived thousands of years ago.

̽��ֱ��results shed light on a mystery surrounding why the major cities of the Indus Civilisation were abandoned. Climate change had been suggested as a possible reason for this transformation before but, until now, there has been no direct evidence for climate change in the region where Indus settlements were located.

Moreover, the finding now links the decline of the Indus cities to a documented global scale climate event and its impact on the Old Kingdom in Egypt, the Early Bronze Age civilisations of Greece and Crete, and the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, whose decline has previously been linked to abrupt climate change.

“We think that we now have a really strong indication that a major climate event occurred in the area where a large number of Indus settlements were situated,” said Professor David Hodell, from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences. “Taken together with other evidence from Meghalaya in northeast India, Oman and the Arabian Sea, our results provide strong evidence for a widespread weakening of the Indian summer monsoon across large parts of India 4,100 years ago.”

Hodell together with ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge archaeologist Dr Cameron Petrie and Gates scholar Dr Yama Dixit collected Melanoides tuberculata snail shells from the sediments of the ancient lake Kotla Dahar in Haryana, India. “As today, the major source of water into the lake throughout the Holocene is likely to have been the summer monsoon,” said Dixit. “But we have observed that there was an abrupt change, when the amount of evaporation from the lake exceeded the rainfall – indicative of a drought.”

At this time large parts of modern Pakistan and much of western India was home to South Asia’s great Bronze Age urban society. As Petrie explained: “ ̽��ֱ��major cities of the Indus civilisation flourished in the mid-late 3rd and early 2nd millennium BC. Large proportions of the population lived in villages, but many people also lived in ‘megacities’ that were 80 hectares or more in size – roughly the size of 100 football pitches. They engaged in elaborate crafts, extensive local trade and long-ranging trade with regions as far away as the modern-day Middle East. But, by the mid 2nd millennium BC, all of the great urban centres had dramatically reduced in size or been abandoned.”

Many possible causes have been suggested, including the claim that major glacier-fed rivers changed their course, dramatically affecting the water supply and the reliant agriculture. It has also been suggested that an increasing population level caused problems, there was invasion and conflict, or that climate change caused a drought that large cities could not withstand long-term.

“We know that there was a clear shift away from large populations living in megacities,” said Petrie. “But precisely what happened to the Indus Civilisation has remained a mystery. It is unlikely that there was a single cause, but a climate change event would have induced a whole host of knock-on effects.

“We have lacked well-dated local climate data, as well as dates for when perennial water flowed and stopped in a number of now abandoned river channels, and an understanding of the spatial and temporal relationships between settlements and their environmental contexts. A lot of the archaeological debate has really been well-argued speculation.”

̽��ֱ��new data, collected with funding from the Natural Environment Research Council, show a decreased summer monsoon rainfall at the same time that archaeological records and radiocarbon dates suggest the beginning of the Indus de-urbanisation. From 6,500 to 5,800 years ago, a deep fresh-water lake existed at Kotla Dahar. ̽��ֱ��deep lake transformed to a shallow lake after 5,800 years ago, indicating a weakening of the Indian summer monsoon. But an abrupt monsoon weakening occurred 4,100 years ago for 200 years and the lake became ephemeral after this time.

Until now, the suggestion that climate change might have had an impact on the Indus Civilisation was based on data showing a lessening of the monsoon in Oman and the Arabian Sea, which are both located at a considerable distance from Indus Civilisation settlements and at least partly affected by different weather systems.

Hodell and Dixit used isotope geochemical analysis of shells as a proxy for tracing the climate history of the region. Oxygen exists in two forms – the lighter ¹⁶O and a heavier ¹⁸O variant. When water evaporates from a closed lake (one that is fed by rainfall and rivers but has no outflow), molecules containing the lighter isotope evaporate at a faster rate than those containing the heavier isotopes; at times of drought, when the evaporation exceeds rainfall, there is a net increase in the ratio of ¹⁸O to ¹⁶O of the water. Organisms living in the lake record this ratio when they incorporate oxygen into the calcium carbonate (CaCO3) of their shells, and can therefore be used, in conjunction with radiocarbon dating, to reconstruct the climate of the region thousands of years ago.

Speculating on the effect lessening rainfall would have had on the Indus Civilisation, Petrie said: “Archaeological records suggest they were masters of many trades. They used elaborate techniques to produce a range of extremely impressive craft products using materials like steatite, carnelian and gold, and this material was widely distributed within South Asia, but also internationally. Each city had substantial fortification walls, civic amenities, craft workshops and possibly also palaces. Houses were arranged on wide main streets and narrow alleyways, and many had their own wells and drainage systems. Water was clearly an integral part of urban planning, and was also essential for supporting the agricultural base.

At around the time we see the evidence for climatic change, archaeologists have found evidence of previously maintained streets start to fill with rubbish, over time there is a reduced sophistication in the crafts they used, the script that had been used for several centuries disappears and there were changes in the location of settlements, suggesting some degree of demographic shift.”

“We estimate that the climate event lasted about 200 years before recovering to the previous conditions, which we still see today, and we believe that the civilisation somehow had to cope with this prolonged period of drought,” said Hodell.

̽��ֱ��new research is part of a wider joint project led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Banaras Hindu ̽��ֱ�� in India, which has been funded by the British Council UK-India Education and Research Initiative to investigate the archaeology, river systems and climate of north-west India using a combination of archaeology and geoscience. ̽��ֱ��multidisciplinary project hopes to provide new understanding of the relationships between humans and their environment, and also involves researchers at Imperial College London, the ̽��ֱ�� of Oxford, the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur and the Uttar Pradesh State Archaeology Department.

“It is essential to understand the link between human settlement, water resources and landscape in antiquity, and this research is an important step in that direction,” explained Petrie. “We hope that this will hold lessons for us as we seek to find means of dealing with climate change in our own and future generations.”

Inset image upper: one of the snail shells collected for the study.

Inset image lower: Cameron Petrie in the field.

Climate change may have contributed to the decline of a city-dwelling civilisation in Pakistan and India 4,100 years ago, according to new research.

They engaged in elaborate crafts, extensive local trade and long-ranging trade with regions as far away as the modern-day Middle East. But, by the mid 2nd millennium BC, all of the great urban centres had dramatically reduced in size or been abandoned

Cameron Petrie

Amir Taj

Indus script

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A natural industriousness?

sc604 — Mon, 13 Jan 2014 08:05:00 +0000

Having an impact on politics while remaining independent of it is a challenge for any academic interested in having their ideas implemented, but it’s a tricky tightrope Dr Kamal Munir is used to walking.

One of a select team who in 2011 delivered a comprehensive document outlining a proposed National Industrial Policy as well as an implementation framework to the Ministry of Industries, Pakistan, he remains sceptical about vested interests unwilling to implement its recommendations.

̽��ֱ��National Industrial Policy recommendations are far-reaching, touching on almost every aspect of Pakistan’s public sector industry and infrastructure. It advises that Pakistan Railways be revived and made to carry a much larger proportion of freight; Pakistan International Airlines should be restructured to improve management and operational efficiency; the national energy policy needs to be revised to incentivise better management; energy be delivered on a preferential basis to industry; tariffs be revised to revive value-added industries; engineering and scientific institutions be set up to drive industry; and that a National Road Fund should be created to maintain and develop surface infrastructure.

"These policies have the potential to have a very real impact on people’s lives,” says Munir, “and a very real impact on the Pakistani economy."

Munir has a strong track record of carrying his ideas beyond the academy into government, business and the media: he had acted as consultant or trainer for organisations that include the World Bank, the UK’s Department of Trade and Industry, the Asian Development Bank, ICI, McKinsey & Company, Shell and British Telecom, and his articles have appeared in, or been cited by major financial media outlets.

A concern with the ongoing process of deindustrialisation in Pakistan led Munir to study how the banking sector is performing. He has already contributed a regulatory policy for SME credit for the State Bank of Pakistan and is now about to publish his findings on how banking reforms undertaken in the 2000s appear to have contributed to the decline of industry in Pakistan. At the bottom of the pyramid, Munir has been studying how microfinance is operating in Pakistan. A concern with the lives of ordinary people, as well as with the highest levels of government decision-making, prompted Munir to look at how well microfinance is functioning in Pakistan. This took him out on fieldwork meeting the impoverished rural women whose lives should – when the model works – be bettered by microfinance loans. Similarly, his groundbreaking analysis of Pakistan’s energy problems has been the subject of much debate amongst policy makers, and reported by the Financial Times among other publications.

A desire to ensure his work has impact not just upon policymakers, but on the real lives of Pakistan’s citizens, prompted Munir to issue a warning shortly before the 2013 elections on the worrying rise in inequality in Pakistan. His comment – “ ̽��ֱ��most alarming thing is this inequality leading to social and political issues” – was reported and discussed in the national media.

In truth, Munir continues to guard his independence as a scholar to ensure greater impact for his advice.

"Being an academic allows you to speak truth to power, but you lose this privilege if you become too cosy with those in power. This is why I will always prefer being an academic and an activist than a professional adviser."

To make an impact on policy, you need to get your hands dirty, as Dr Kamal Munir, author of Pakistan’s industrial policy, explains.

These policies have the potential to have a very real impact on people’s lives

Kamal Munir

Usman Ahmed via flickr

industrial revolution

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What price a human kidney?

amb206 — Sat, 14 May 2011 08:00:20 +0000

There are desperately poor villages in Asia where few males between the age of 18 and 50 have two kidneys. This is not for some genetic reason; it is because these communities are so impoverished that many men have sold their kidneys in order to raise sums that are unattainable by any other means.

A public talk at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� on Saturday will draw attention to the extremely difficult and contentious issue of illegal trafficking in human organs – and encourage the audience to think about the complex ethical questions involved. It will also be the inaugural lecture in a research programme focusing on the human organ trade.

̽��ֱ��lecture Illicit Trade in Organs will be given by Dr Frank Madsen, a Danish-born criminologist who is Deputy Director of the Von Hügel Institute at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge. With a distinguished career in the investigation of organised crime, he was head of intelligence at Interpol world headquarters, before working for one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies as its director of corporate security.

“You can look at the subject of organ trafficking from many points of view – medical, sociological, anthropological, legal and commercial to mention just a few. And it’s an issue that we need to address from all these angles because only through interdisciplinary analysis will we understand what is a very complicated subject,” says Dr Madsen.

“As a criminologist, my starting point is the mismatch between supply and demand. There are huge waiting lists of people wanting organ transplants – and a scarcity of donated organs. In the UK, for example, in 2009-2010 there were almost 8,000 people on the list for transplants and fewer than 2,700 transplants carried out. In the USA, in April there were more than 120,000 people waiting for organs with 17 people on the list dying every day.”

In spite of more donations, the number of people joining waiting lists is likely increasingly to outstrip the supply of organs. This is explained by a rise in conditions such as diabetes mellitus and high blood pressure. “ ̽��ֱ��gap between supply and demand creates a potential market. Experience shows that the creation of so-called denied demand will inevitably create a lucrative supply chain more often than not dominated by elements that can best be described as organised crime,” says Dr Madsen.

Living organ donors selling their organs – mostly kidneys but also parts of the liver - generally come from poor countries, but not all poor countries generate donors. India, Pakistan, Moldova and Turkey are known to be markets for organs. In the most typical scenario, the donor travels to another country to meet up with the receiver and the surgeon, both of whom typically come from a third country.

This strategy allows the people involved to evade legal restraints and obtain access to acceptable operating theatres. In Sana’a in April 2010 a Jordanian trafficker was arrested as he was preparing to travel to Egypt with seven Yeminis in order to remove their kidneys. ̽��ֱ��donors were exceedingly poor and had been talked into having their organs removed.

“In many instances, those who donate their organs are promised enticing sums of money that are never delivered. This an obvious corollary of forcing any trade underground. Such exploitation should be part of any ethical consideration of the subject but mostly it is not. Another consideration often ignored is the negative consequences for donors of surgery that is not carried out under adequate conditions and without post-operation follow-up,” says Dr Madsen.

We accept the sale of our time and our skills, our energy and our creativity as part of making a living. How we view the sale of part of our physical selves is a very different matter. If we accept organ donation within families, and procedures such as surrogate motherhood, should we be prepared to change our stance on the concept of the “ownership of our body”?

“There is an instinctive repugnance at the thought of selling human body parts. But we are accustomed to going to the market place for what we desire to purchase – and especially so in developed countries. This is called the Lipmann Dichotomy – from Walter Lipmann’s quip that “Americans wish so many things that they at the same time wish to prohibit”,” says Dr Madsen.

Coercion is involved in many cases – and in some instances people have been killed so that their organs can be harvested. In South America homeless people were lured into a hospital with promises of alcohol and their lives were terminated so that their organs could be removed and sold. Those who bought or received these organs may never have known the truth about their source.

Outrage at the human organ trade – and especially its most exploitative aspects - is understandable. However, Dr Madsen urges us to reflect on the issue with honesty: “Our instinct is to condemn illegal trafficking in human organs. But you have to think: if your adored teenage daughter was dying of kidney failure and you had the chance to buy one from someone, who, for example, was very poor and therefore induced to sell a kidney, would you be tempted?"

This week’s talk is an inaugural lecture in a programme to study the human organ trade at the Von Hügel Institute, commencing in October 2011 and led by an international team of researchers. A first step will be an attempt to establish why 41% of families in the UK and 45% in the USA refuse permission for the donation of a deceased relative’s organs. “To change this attitude would not eliminate the human organ trade but it would reduce it considerably,” says Dr Madsen.

Illicit Trade in Organs will take place at Gonville and Caius College, Bateman Auditorium, on Saturday, 14 May 2011, at 4.30 pm. All welcome, no charge.

A public talk at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� on Saturday will draw attention to the growing illegal trade in human organs and invite discussion of the complex ethical issues involved.

As a criminologist, my starting point is the mismatch between supply and demand. There are huge waiting lists of people wanting organ transplants – and a scarcity of donated organs.

Dr Frank Madsen

5MAGAZINE

Men display their scars after kidney removal

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