In the Line of Wire

Remember the good old days when shops and restaurants used to advertise that they had home-made icecream on their menus or that certain dishes they were serving were as delicious as mama used to make. Well apparently times really have changed. We now have Knorr’s latest campaign cheerfully announcing “Restaurant Jaisa Chinese ab ghar pe”. What is the world coming to? <sigh>

This is the transcript of a meeting entitled “Bloggers in Prison, Too” http://www.political-explorations.info/en/wiki/Bloggers_in_Prison%2C_Too, which took place on 18 March 2007 at the Centre for Socialist Studies in Cairo, Egypt. The background for the meeting was the case of Abd Al-Karim Nabil Sulaiman, an Egyptian blogger sentenced to four years in prison for contempt of religion. The discussion touched on many subjects, including the worldwide battle against freedom of expression, the state of Egypt’s opposition groups, young people’s participation in protests, the political role of blogs, the loss of privacy and the spread of wireless Internet technology.

Thanks to Rob Dyke for placing this on the World Summit on Free Information Infrastructure list where I spotted it. It is an 18-page document so you will need patience to go through it. The full discussion makes fascinating reading.

City Nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal paid our locality a visit a few minutes ago - yes it is 1:50 a.m. here in Karachi and no I am not dreaming. Ever since the 44 hour power debacle at the weekend, we have had power outages of 10 - 12 hours daily. Calling KESC gets you no results - all they say (if you are persistent enough to get through to them) is that they have no idea when it will be restored - that they are trying their best.

I have been down with fever and a very nasty cough so I was restless anyway and was sitting in the garden (lovely breeze in Karachi these days - yes there is a silver lining) wondering if I should give up on power restoration and try and sleep anyway, when I heard some activity outside our gate. Peeping over the gate who do I see pull up but the Nazim himself escorted by two police vans. I don’t know if it was a stunt (who cares!!!) but seconds later the power was back on. Yay! He looked around satisfied, jumped back into the car and went on his merry way - hopefully to another such district which needed him. I yelled out Thank you - don’t know if he heard me so I smsed him. My parents always taught me to be polite :-).

Mustafa Kamal used to live in this area before he moved up in the world so maybe he has some consideration for his former neighbours - hey it’s possible. Let us not always look for political motivation. The chap is known to be very hands-on and ever since he has taken over as Nazim, one often spots him checking on roadworks, etc at all odd hours. All I can say is I am glad the power is back and I can finally try and get a few hours’ shut-eye before heading to work tomorrow morning.

TATA’s latest announcement that they are producing an entry level Rs. 1 lakh car for the Indian market has raised some debate on the Indian lists.

My friend, Vickram Crishna, who often comments on this blog, has sent this fiery mail to the Bytes4All list - a development community list. With his permission, I am reproducing it below.

The move by TATA, while one can see its absolute necessity for the corporate org within its own parameters, is close to disastrous for the country. I don’t blame them alone - they are not the only industrial group to take advantage of very shallow politico-economic planning in ‘emerging’ nations.

I disagree partly with the thesis that more personal transportation choices will enable the physically challenged to participate in the global economy. That will more likely happen when we modify the current crop of personal computing devices (or better still, redesign them from scratch) to be more accessible (together with making broadband free for all). These should be national priorities, not building cheaper cars.

This is at the very core of the development debate. The desire for personal ‘owned’ transportation is a product of two converging forces -

1. the lack of decent reliable public transport in both urban and rural areas, combined with the lack of informational infrastructure to support public transport (just look at how easy it is to get around anywhere, knowledgeably, in cities like London, New York and Amsterdam), and
2. the hyped up consumerist craze for yet one more gadget, that has led to ‘aspirations’- driven selling at any cost.

Actually vehicles are my pet peeve - the exceedingly poor engineering design concept of wheeled/tyred vehicles that depend on ’superb’ roads - which are, as it happens, natural land destroyers, are a feature of the last 125 years of ‘development’ that have seen an explosion of foolish urban and national planning (such that it is).

How is it that the craze for personal transport is controlled in cities like Singapore? Quite easy - just charge an arm and a leg for the privilege, and make sure that the alternatives actually work, and the city functions quite well without massive traffic jams and ridiculously crowded roads. It doesn’t need ministerial visits* to find out how that happens - just search on wikipedia, google, or answers. But there are other alternatives - did anyone notice how, in the film I, Robot, everyone used identical electric vehicles that were clearly not ‘owned’ by their users?

*Visit season is just ending, and a parade of ministers returns to devil all our states from their factfinding tours abroad. This city, Mumbai, is set to be the new Shanghai, once every minister has paid his/her obeisance to Punta Arenas and Labrador on their way to finding out how Shanghai works (with a bullet and a noose, btw, in case you are also wondering).

As we have all noticed, there has been an amazing growth in the number of television and radio channels in the country. This has brought with it variety in programming and exciting jobs for lots of talented young people. However, it has also brought with it fierce competition. And, with competition, there is apparently the need for one-upmanship - breaking the news first, hiring top guns, sensationalism, etc etc. But does this mean forgetting that there should be a code of ethical practice? And abiding by it?

The reason I pose this question is that in the early stage of our media revolution, it is important that these questions be asked and addressed. For instance last week, in an attempt to provide breaking news before their competitors did, two different television channels did the following:

• One of them reported that the Balochistan budget had been passed when the budget session was still in progress!
• The other one reported that Pakistani tennis sensation Aisam-ul Haq Qureshi had won the third and final qualifying round at Wimbledon against Canadian number one Frank Dancevic in a four-set thriller - this news broke while the match was still going on! I am glad their crystal ball proved to be right but that is NOT what it is about. They are supposed to report the news and not predict it.

I was feeling a little under the weather and so decided to come home around 3:30 pm yesterday to get some rest. Little did I know what awaited me. At exactly 4 pm, KESC decided to shut off the power and at around 4:30 a windstorm the likes of which I haven’t ever seen in Karachi, lashed the city. This was followed by rain. One of the tallest trees in our garden (planted by my nephew 12 years ago) broke in half and fell on the gate. Fortunately no-one was hurt. This is just one of many stories from across the city - hoardings falling, trees being uprooted and of course drains being blocked and power being put off. Over 44 people killed, hundreds injured.
In one statement, KESC said that the grids were turned off as a precautionary measure. In another, they claimed that one of the major feeders caught fire. Whatever the story, no-one at KESC was answering the complaints number.

Our UPS survived 7 hours after which it gave up so I turned on the generator which only lasted two hours because the chowkidaar had forgotten to refill it with fuel. Somehow from 1 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. we survived on rechargeable lights and fans after which I had to venture out to get more fuel. My father was upset that I was going out at that hour but I didn’t have an option since there was no-one else who could do it.

We are now into our 23rd hour without electricity with no inkling as to when the power will be back. The refrigerators are off as are the Air conditioners because our generator can only support lights and fans and my Mac (thank God). There is no cold water to quench my thirst.

But as I sit here whining, I wonder how the majority of people in the city who have no UPS and no generator are managing to cope. Much as we may complain about the power riots and people setting tyres on fire or pelting cars, can we really understand how it feels to be without power and water for hours and days? Two people in my neighbourhood have died today. An announcement was being made earlier. I wonder if it was because of the heat or perhaps an accident caused by electrical cables lying around on the streets or collapsing walls or a falling tree or hoarding?

Who do we take to task? Can we sue KESC? If we do, will it be any use except to make some lawyers richer and to cause ourselves further aggravation? The government tells us that the problems of this city are severe and cannot be dealt with in the short term. This particular government has been in power for almost 8 years. Granted the City Government has done some work on the infrastructure and the flyovers and underpasses have eased the traffic situation a bit (when the underpasses are not underwater that is). Previous governments have made promises but never kept them. Where do the citizens go for answers to their grievances? Or don’t they count?

I am sorry if it seems that I have got it in for the banks (like Osama Hashmi has it in for the telcos (www.greenwhite.org). Everywhere you look, there is a bank offering a Personal Loan so you can take your family on a holiday for the summer - and of course shop to your heart’s content (as if the money never has to be paid back). Does this indicate that there is a shortage of ideas in the marketing departments of banks or the creative departments of the ad agencies that represent them? Come on guys there must be other ways to get people to borrow money? Other temptations you can offer?

The Women’s Excellence Awards 2007 were held on Sunday June 17 at the Marriott Hotel in Karachi. I received an Award – “ICT Woman of the Year”. Whereas my father and my friends were delighted that I had been “recognized” for the efforts I had put in day and night for the ICT industry from 2003 - 2006, I didn’t really feel too much of a thrill. Was that because I generally feel that when awards are separated according to gender, it is be-littling to the woman? I ask myself am I being recognized because I managed to do something for the ICT sector despite being a woman? There were also awards given to the Woman Banker of the Year and Woman Manager of the Year - signifying that women couldn’t hold their own if the Awards were generic?

My question is if the award I was given was in recognition for my contribution to the ICT industry … you know like I am not a separate creature but am being recognized as a professional in a particular industry, would I then not have qualified? These aren’t questions that will keep me awake at night but I do wonder if women in this country will ever be recognized for what they achieve because they have beaten all odds, because they are good at what they do and because they deserve to be recognized. Or will they always be made to feel like they are being given a “special mention” so that their feelings aren’t hurt?  Anyway, here is a picture of me and my Award such as it is.

Sunday - June 17 - the Marriott Hotel Karachi - the theme of the conference was “Women with no limits …” a theme that unfortunately generated more winks and grins than was the intent of whoever thought this theme up.

At the conference the organizers also felt the need to explain that they meant “Women with no limits … BUT within the limits of our culture and religion”.

The conference was divided into several panels:

Successful Women Entrepreneurs

• Role of Women in Media
• Careers in Finance and IT
• Women’s Rights

Registration was scheduled from 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. with the conference starting at 10:15. Of course this did not happen. It actually started at 11:40 a.m. because, as is usual in this country, only a few of us got there on time. Strangely it was the speakers who were there on time - perhaps that is why they are successful. When will we as a nation learn to value time I wonder? The number of events that start late because the Chief Guest, the delegates or the organizers are not on time, amazes and depresses me.

The success of the Asian Tigers is to a large extent due to hard work and punctuality. Valuing other people’s time is an indication of respect. I lose it whenever someone says “but this is Pakistan” as if that makes it alright.

Anyway, once the conference began, I was totally engaged. Most of the speakers were absolutely brilliant and the Q&A sessions brought the event to life. It is difficult to put down what everyone said but some of the key issues that were discussed were:

Micro-Finance: The interest charged is 18 - 22%. Is this supposed to assist women with small businesses or penalize them? This came through in the Q&A. I also brought up the fact that for some reason financial institutions and government were of the opinion that women only needed micro-finance (i.e. between 30K - 100K) to start businesses. What about those of us who wanted to start an SME operation and not a cottage industry? This amount was nowhere near enough. Shehla Akram Javed, Chairperson of the FPCCI Committee on Women Entrepreneurship, brought up the question of collateral-free loans for women. She said the Bank of Punjab was offering them so why couldn’t banks in Sindh be persuaded to do so well - especially the Women’s Bank and NBP. She said this was especially necessary unless the government was going to do something about addressing the women’s right to inherit property.

Role of Women in Media: Seema Tahir of TVOne, Mehreen Meher, City Editor of Daily Times and a lady who used to work for BBC for many years were amongst the panelists. Some of the barriers and challenges were discussed as were the opportunities. However, through Q&A it was highlighted that women needed to play a more pro-active role in ensuring that advertisements and programming did not present stereotypes and further propagate cultural norms that hurt the integration of women into society.

Women’s Rights: Justice Majida Rizvi in her talk pointed out articles in the constitution that ensure equal rights for the women of Pakistan. She also quoted from the Quran and said that certain politicians were interpreting the Quran and Hadith incorrectly to refrain from giving women their just rights. Her co-panelists were Kashmala Tariq and Farooq Sattar who emphasized the contributions of this government in terms of amendments to the Hudood Ordinance and the Women’s Protection Bill as well as the 33% reprsentation in Parliament for women.

Kashmala is a very good speaker and did bring out some of the problems with existing laws. I don’t know her personally but I would like to believe that she is sincere in her efforts to help change the status quo for women in this country and get for them the rights they deserve.

However, I think I did not make myself very popular with at least two people on the panel when I asked if they didn’t think that further work needed to be done by government to ensure that a large number of the women in parliament were not merely puppets of political parties and politicians.

I spoke about Careers for Women in IT - mentioned some of the success stories, the barriers and challenges that existed and what could be done to overcome them.

Overall I enjoyed the conference and thought that it brought out a lot of important issues. My only regret was that there weren’t enough younger women in the audience. Registration charges were Rs. 2,500 but when I asked the organizers why there weren’t more young girls from the colleges and universities taking part, they said they had asked the universities to send their students and that the registration fee would be waived. I hope that is true. If it is, then I am surprised that there weren’t more of them.

Of course the turnout increased in the pre-lunch and pre-dinner segments <sigh> … will we never get our priorities right?

It is so nice to know that Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto have resolved their differences and have come to an understanding that BB will be PM for 5 years after which NS will take over as PM for the next 5 years. Do the citizens of this country have a say at all in who rules/serves them, or would that be too much to expect?

The first in the series of the P@SHA Career Expo 2007 events is taking place at the Expo Centre in Karachi tomorrow. The last minute activities are on, there is lots of excitement - and panic stations - as nerves are on edge - and we expect to be up all night putting things in order for the amazing career experience tomorrow.

It promises to be an exciting event with a lot of interaction, thousands of job opportunities and fresh graduates and professionals piling in to network and look for positions in the thriving ICT sector.

Come join us! We will be in Hall 4 from 10 am - 8 pm tomorrow – actually we will be there all night but you don’t have to be.

By now many have heard of “The Second Floor” - a different kind of coffee house set up by Sabeen Mahmud who is now a social entrepreneur. Hence t2f is not on Zamzama and looks nothing like the spate of coffee shops that have spurted all over Karachi. It is on Khayaban-e-Ittehad on the second floor of the Prime Point Building. A location map is available on their website. The coffee is delicious and affordable, so are the chillers and sandwiches, quiches, etc.

I have held many of my meetings there (especially when KESC has played havoc with the electricity on Zamzama where my office is situated). The ambience, the fast wifi connection and the delicious drinks have made me go back again and again. I must admit however that I end up buying books and t-shirts that I had not budgeted for - but they are worth it.

Yesterday I went there at 4 to have meetings with my lawyer and a lady from CSF/USAID. Hadn’t had time for lunch so I snacked on the new finger foods that have been introduced at t2f - crackers with fetta cheese (and spicy chips and dip that i have yet to sample). I also had the delicious Green Apple Chiller, an Espresso, another Chiller - they are addictive! I highly recommend the crackers and fetta to anyone who doesn’t want to partake of a heavy sandwich.

I got another perspective on t2f yesterday from my lawyer who says that he only goes back to food outlets that pass the one sure test he has - apart from having tasty snacks and a nice environment of course - and that is the state of the washrooms. He gave an A+ to t2f. So I just had to check it out for myself. Wow! Clean, rose petals in a clay dish, a rack with a collection of magazines, liquid soap and little towelettes that you can throw in the laundry basket after you’ve wiped your hands - and interesting clippings of all sorts on the bulletin boards. Certainly very different from any coffee shop I have visited in this city.

I was lucky that I left for home (F.B. Area) a little late today -
8:25 pm. Was finishing off some meetings at The Second Floor and on the way out got into an intense discussion with Sabeen and Minal (a new friend I made at t2f who seems to be on a similar wavelength). Very invigorating conversation!

Anyway, as soon as I got into the car, I turned on FM107 for traffic updates. Have got used to doing that because it is so helpful to know which areas to avoid during the rush hour. This evening there was a report that due to power protests, tyre burning, car-pelting, etc. the route leading from Hasan Square to Gharibabad was jammed. That is my normal route home. So I changed strategy and did as the RJ suggested - took the Rashid Minhas Road. All through my drive, thousands of drivers and i were kept updated by Aquib Tauqeer regarding the different trouble spots and possible alternative routes.

Listeners phoned in (I did too) to advise other listeners which routes to take and which to avoid. The power of radio was never so pronounced in my mind as it was this evening (although of course it couldn’t compare with the ham radios used during the Tsunami and earthquakes).

Aquib also tried to appeal to the protestors (although i don’t think they had their radios or ipods with FM transmitters with them) by telling them that although they were justified in their frustrations, they should not take it out on fellow citizens who not only had to put up with the same power breakdowns but now also had to sit in traffic jams for 3 - 5 hours because of the riots. Not to mention the ambulances that were stuck and patients who could die if they didn’t get medical care quickly.

I continue to live in the hope that one day my fellow citizens will realize that burning public transport, hurting others by pelting their cars with stones and burning tyres and shops is not the way to be heard. One should protest - but do it without causing harm to people and property, do it without resorting to violence.

Anyway, the purpose of this post was to thank FM107. The young RJs on this station are to be commended for what they do. I am not too keen on their taste in music (but then that is a question of personal taste). However, some of the discussions that are held in the morning show Tazadum give one hope that young people are becoming more aware and more involved in their surroundings and are searching for ways to improve things in this country. Well done FM107! Keep it up Adeel, Sukaina, Danish, Aquib and the rest of the team. Strange that none of the other stations thought of interrupting programming to issue traffic updates today - I kept tuning in to check. After all there wasn’t really that much to do while sitting in the car - other than listening to the radio and talking on my cell phone.

I am currently going through this book and wanted
to share the definition of disruption as defined by
the author:

Disruption is about uncovering the culturally embedded biases and conventions that shape standard approaches to business thinking and get in the way of clear, creative thinking. It’s about shattering those biases and conventions and setting creativity free to forge a radical new vision of a product, brand or service. It’s about spearheading change rather than reacting to it.

Reading the whole book is not quite what i can cope with (it’s just not the kind of book one reads cover to cover) but for those of you who speed-read, there are some useful ideas to pick up and use.

I remember years ago when I was still living in Hong Kong, I used to get mail from Nigeria offering to share millions of dollars if I sent my bank account number and a blank signed copy of my company invoice. Since then this entrepreneural spirit seems to have spread to other countries and one often gets emails from South Africa, the UK, Saudi Arabia and a host of other countries offering to share millions of dollars if bank details are provided. Sometimes it is a lottery that you have supposedly won. Of course most of us delete these immediately but some have been known to have fallen victims to these scams.

I received a message a few weeks ago advising me that I had won the Virgin Atlantic Airways lottery worth GBP 500,000. Since all it asked for was my office address and phone number so that the money could be sent to me, I was tempted into sending a response (hey who doesn’t need GBP 500,000). I thought I would receive another mail asking me for my account number and a blank signed invoice. That never happened so I promptly forgot about the whole thing - until last week.

When I returned from Delhi I received a message that someone by the name of Jackson had called me. It was a Mobilink number that he had left for me to return his call. I didn’t get round to calling him because of all the other matters that required my attention that day. So in the evening I got another call from Jackson. He sounded like a foreigner (had a strange accent that I couldn’t quite put my finger on). Anyway, he asked how my trip had been, then told me that my consignment had arrived. I asked “What consignment?” He jogged my memory by mentioning the lottery and said that he had flown into Islamabad to deliver the consignment to me. He then asked when I could fly to Islamabad. I told him I lived in Karachi and why couldn’t the consignment be sent to me here. He said it could but I would have to pay clearing charges. I asked what the clearing charges were for - it isn’t as if the money would have been shipped in a crate! It must have come through a bank or exchange company. He said these were bank clearing charges. I asked him how much and he said $2,000. Now I knew that he was taking me for a ride so I told him “That’s fine - you clear it and send me the money and an invoice and I will pay you - or better still just deduct it from the GBP 500,000″. He responded that this was not the correct procedure and that I would have to send the US$2,000 first before the winnings could be sent to me. I told him where to go and hung up. Do you think I gave up too easy? Have I lost a large bundle of money? Naaaah! I think I saved US$2,000.