Yeh Radio Pakistan hai

Yeh Woh
News on Sunday, March 25, 2012
 

It is ironical that people in Pakistan  have more trust in and loyalty towards foreign state broadcasters than their own state radio. And responding with double irony, the government wishes to change public perceptions, not by changing the way the PBC aka Radio Pakistan operates, but by slapping additional tax on the public.

 Public service broadcasting is a noble pursuit because it aims at informing, educating and entertaining the public at the expense of the tax payer and without being encumbered by the demands of commercialism. It’s not unusual for state broadcasters to disseminate propaganda in times of war or strife – BBC did it during WW II and during Falklands war and  Voice of America does it routinely as a matter of stated policy – but by and large it is an institution of value to the common people and needs to be preserved, kept modernised, and taken pride in.

 Born as Radio Pakistan  and renamed Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation in 1973, the broadcaster has always been owned and operated by the government. Its management board is headed by secretary information and broadcasting, and consists of members drawn from ministries of foreign affairs, finance, and interior, as well as heads of PTV and ISPR, the military’s mouthpiece. The chief executive is the director general who along with four ‘eminent persons’ as board members, is appointed at the discretion of federal government.

 The very constitution of the board makes it a tool in the hands of governments, both the military and civilian variety. And given its penetration – it’s the largest network of AM and FM radio in the country – and a subservient philosophy towards treating facts, history and music to please the rulers, it is a very powerful tool. The tradition and legacy of Radio Pakistan  (as indeed it is of PTV)is unashamedly towing the line of whatever government happens to be in power, and packaging it as patriotism. In fact everything it does, it does for the love of Pakistan  and its people, and yet it serves only the rulers.

 Along the way, it does some humanitarian information project, keeps alive some regional languages, and occasionally nurtures musical talent. But overall it only does disservice to public by misinforming and miseducating it. It has always done so, has always been thrown scraps at by the government, and has thrived. What has changed now that it is reaching into our pockets to survive?

 The case was built at a recent public concert in Islamabad, hosted by the DG. The evening’s host, Shuja’at Hashmi – one of those aging actors who sound senile whatever they say just because of their full head of jet black hair, in this case a wig – listed a number of grievances Radio Pakistan has, which all added up to an admission that the organisation needs help. What’s outrageous is what he proclaims next:that it’s you and me who are going to provide the help. Excuse me? What have I done?

You and me were represented at that pre-concert campaign-to-save-Radio Pakistan, by Senator Afrasiab Khattak and Babar Awan, two politicians cum lawyers who have no business with broadcasting, or if they have they didn’t mention it. What Mr. Awan confidently promised was that he’ll personally take it up with the finance minister. Excuse me? In what capacity? And if you  lobby in favour of the so-called Radio Tax, who are you representing? You are not even a senator.

It’s just ‘two rupees’ Hashmi kept reminding the audience, alternately employing comic and emotional tones – both of which sound equally tragic. I wish I lived in a society where someone would stand up and politely tell Mr. Hashmi that it’s not about two rupees. It’s a negation of the social contract we Pakistanis have with the state: you don’t work for us, we don’t pay you taxes. And here, an organization running on my money, working for the state, wants to tax me?

 ‘The average daily wage of a contract employee is, and get this … three … hundred … rupees,’ Mr. Hashmi goes dramatic. Yes, it’s sadly true. And it’s also true that when crunch comes, this employee’s salary is delayed for months, but never with the executives drawing six digit salaries. What’s also true is a majority of them will always remain contract employees because there are already three people hired on regular terms to do the job that eventually gets done by a contract employee.

Is afghani a female Afghan?

Yeh Woh (The News on Sunday, 20-11-11)

Pakistani newspapers are not known for their reading pleasure, perhaps because the writers and editors have never sought and found pleasure in reading and therefore consider good prose and news copy mutually exclusive. Or perhaps readers only care for information and not how it is presented.

It doesn’t necessarily follow that news copy, however bland and shabby, contains meaningful information for the reader. A vast majority of the stories appearing in print are done not to inform or educate the reader but to achieve the count of stories each reporter must file. And if at all there is a point to the story, it is lost to bad language.

Consider some of the oft repeated phrases in the leading newspapers: ‘democracy may be derailed’, ‘people will soon hear the good news’, ‘the disinformation is being spread by the agencies’ and the favourite of Urdu press: ‘there will be dama dum mast qalandar’. No one including the writer knows what these phrases mean or care about how they will be interpreted by the reader. Unless democracy is equated with Shalimar Express which is taken off tracks one fine day, is resumed a few days later, and is stopped again.

The vernacular press uses the analogy of ‘folding up of chess board’ which is just as mysterious because both use an active verb and no subject. Pray tell who will derail, and who will fold up? The ‘Subject that cannot be named’ is some times referred to as ‘agencies’. The last time I checked, the term was used in every newsroom for news wire agencies. Like, a story is attributed to agencies when contents of more than one news wires are used. The other use of ‘agencies’ was popularised by MQM when it wanted to point a finger at one or several military intelligence outfits but wasn’t sure which one(s).

In fact all these and many more ambiguous phrases are coined by politicians whose job it is not to inform and educate, and therefore can’t be held accountable. But when a journalist uses this nonsense in a news story, who is clamouring for accountability? When a politician promises good news soon, it is reported verbatim as if there is a precedent of politicians giving good news to the people. As far as I remember the only times we as a nation celebrate good news is when a government — any government — falls. And this news is almost always broken by a four-star general in crisp khaki uniform. So while we may get good news at the expense of politicians, there is no sense in politicians promising their own doom. As for the ‘mast qalandar’ line, I have no idea what it means, and can’t even guess if it is alright for a non-Sindhi politician to use it. But every Urdu paper worth its masthead continues to print it.

To be fair to the average reporter who describes MFN as most ‘favourite’ nation, and thereby ignites a nation-wide debate on how come our arch enemy has become our buddy overnight, the above phrases are too cryptic to handle and therefore they do the right thing by slipping in a useful ‘he said’ before or after the sentence, thereby washing their hands off whatever it does or doesn’t mean.

But even the experts available to our media do not add much to our understanding. A political analyst — and they are the largest tribe of experts owing to the fact that the job requires no qualification at all — builds his or her entire argument on the basis that a civilian government is a democratic government. The defence analyst can seldom make out that the singular form of Taliban is ‘talib’. The economist can blabber on endlessly about the micro and macro indicators but never a sentence a high school graduate can understand. And I don’t know a single Afghanistan expert who knows the difference between an Afghan and an afghani.

The most unfortunate English word, on account of its rampant abuse, is perhaps ‘alternative’. In fact chances are you won’t find the word if you ran a search of the online database of Pakistani newspapers. It is one of those ‘missing words’ like the ‘missing people’ our Supreme Court keeps searching in vain. Try this instead: type in ‘alternate’, and if you get 100 results, 95 of these were actually meant to use ‘alternative’.