1429 Hijri, The Mourners of Muharram

I i looked up and saw an armed helicopter conducting aerial survey… There were armed personnel on many rooftops looking at us down below,  there was a convoy, belonging to different security forces, crawling in front of what appeared to be a huge crowd of both, old and the young, male and the female… and most of them were clad in black.

They kept chanting the same thing over and over again… and that is when i saw the first gleaming silver blade in mid-air, attached to it was a chain…

i was trying to make sense of why it had suddenly swung up, when with the same force that it had come up just a few seconds ago, it went down… and i heard a loud cry as this man who was already bleeding, started to bleed more…

the mourners had begun…

I spoke to a young boy who was part of the procession and he complained that the turnout was low, and although to me it seemed like a huge crowd… He insisted that last year there were more people… What kept them indoors? I asked him. The boy replied - ”Fear…”

Putting everything at risk, these procession mourners were out on the roads… and doing something extra-ordinary… inflicting pain on oneself… it made me wonder what was going through their minds?

To me, it seems totally pointless to perform these acts of torture… But whether it is right or wrong is not the debate i want to get into…

I wanted to highlight that the first month for the Islamic Calendar coincides with January…

Two News Years within 2 weeks – sounds like its going to be a heavy year.. And although it can be regarded as random superstition … 2008 feels like the Year of Mourning…

The Speculative Black Gold

 

Pakistan is a living example of the threat that persists because of depletion of ‘energy’ resources, which are rapidly decreasing around the world… but is that true? 

Will, for example – Oil… really finish?

I came across a survey done by British Petroleum, published by the name of Statistical Review of World Energy - 2007. It can be found the on the website of BP.

I did some calculations for oil and found out that the total production of Oil for the total world has increased by 16.78%, and the total consumption of oil by 17.11%…

The change I calculated was for the last ten years, (1996-2006) …

That surprised me because recently prices touched a $100 per barrel so I decided to find out the average oil price per barrel in 1996, and it was $26.77 (calculated in terms of today), and in 2006, oil prices averaged out to be $65.14, and for 2007, I came across the figure in an online financial journal, to be around $78…

So the prices gained more than 100% increase in ten years but the production and consumption have relatively grown together… it cant be because dollar is reducing its value, because we have taken into account the devaluation aspects… 

It reflects that in the last ten years, the oil industry has increased revenues by more than 100%, although the supply and demand have relatively matched each other… So speculation is the major reason that has led to an increase in price… And speculation regarding the geo-political situaiton of the Middle East has fueled the prices most…

One wonders who benefits from the rise in oil prices the most? And more importantly which countries have contributed to worsening the geo-political situation in the Middle East…?

The speculative price movement of the Black Gold has made some people very rich…

The Economic Enlightenment…

Today my formal ‘economics’ education restarted…

The fact that there is a formal and an informal separation in the educational setup of most developing nations bothers me…

What they teach at business universities can’t be applied to realities of life. Theories explained in economics or business books look beautiful but they’re rarely applicable as real life scenarios involve many unknown variables that cannot be encompassed into a theory. A theory works for an ideal situation where the rest is kept constant… and as cliched as it may sound – Change is the only constant, as many say.

So how do we bridge the gap between the formal and informal educational setup?

It comes with the habit of documentation. The fact that many of us forget to write but only to speak well eventually has no impact because words spoken disappear… words written stay forever. And the lack of economic and business publications in Pakistan about Pakistan is a major flaw in our educational system, because without knowing about the local dynamics and its relation to economics, we will learn nothing that we can apply. 

We have a serious lack of local literature on social sciences… Concepts taught at universities concerning ‘management’ issues are not localized and the culture is such that when students are using reference guides, the books reflect a level of superficiality because the understanding is that as developed economies are successful - ”lets apply their concepts to our worlds”…

But our worlds are very different. We may be in a leadership crisis in Pakistan, but more importantly we need to focus on ”Economic Enlightenment”… 

Pakistan to succeed has to apply a localized economic agenda…

The revolution should not be about driving away power hungry men, so to speak, but fighting and demanding Economic Justice…

Pakistan: A Dead End…

The The roads are empty… the streets are silent… there is a trail of smoke rising to the skyline of the city… Welcome to the place where I live – Karachi…

Almost every corner has traces of violence… Cars burnt, shops ransacked, and other public property damaged… All in the name of a tragedy that should ensue a deeper understanding of the changing global dynamics… and not the destruction of thought and ideologies that define us as humans…

What will violence bring about? A further aggravation to the resentment. When I was out on the roads today, there was an edgy-ness all around…

While on the way to work, on one end I saw Rangers patrolling, and the armed man looking out for any miscreants… on the other – I I Chundrigar’s boys were out playing cricket in front of Jang Press, which is on the main road.. So ya… not a lot had changed in some people’s life….

I went for lunch in one of the lanes, and the restaurant was open and full… ”Life was going on” – I thought to myself… Then I spoke to a friend of mine and his car was burnt down last nite when he was on his way back home… so for some life wasnt really going on….

The assasination of Benazir Bhutto… on 27th dec.  she was not the only one to disappear, alongwith her, having sanity to live in the world we inhabit did not make sense… you gotta be mad to be living in this mad world… its compulsory.