A Journey in Jammu Kashmir & Allied areas (JKA)............................
from Subject to Citizen
.........autocracy to democracy
.........Dogra Raaj to Awaami Raaj
.........1947 CE to...........................
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Showing posts with label London School of Economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label London School of Economics. Show all posts
I'm now almost ready to give attention to the Public Policy Analysis Course that I'm doing at the London School of Economics. I am almost 5 weeks behind and may not receive much more time to catch up. It's a pity as I was scoring above average marks till many other public interest priorities merited my attention and application.
Most of our people do not fully understand how time consuming on the ground public activism is.
Mulling over some of our evening Twitter Space discussions it is becoming increasingly obvious that we need metrics to measure how our citizens negotiate public vs private interest. As the inability to do so is largely responsible for us not being able to develop a system of governance here since 1947. I would also suggest that this has been the bane of our previous generations too.
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The London School of Economics also has something to say about the FIFA World Cup taking place in Qatar:
I felt compelled to leave a comment too:
Thank you #LSE for taking up this topic. It has also featured in our work on #PublicPolicy in AJK. Which is affecting my PPA course at this very institution but that is another story.
My punctuality deficit has increased to 183 minutes.
Punctuality percentage: 44 days late of 85 = 52% late
One thing is certain. Whenever I have to travel out of Dadyaal the odds of me being late the next morning increase exponentially. It is remarkable that the gains I made yesterday morning were cancelled out precisely today. That is, I arrived at 0717hrs yesterday and thus decreased my punctuality deficit by 43 minutes. Today, I was precisely 43 minutes late!
For those of you who are unfamiliar with my work it is important to understand that I have spent 85 days in a row - without a break - between 0800hrs and 1000hrs at Maqbool Bhat Martyr's Square in Dadyaal. Unfortunately, I have not been punctual on every single day and thus am trying to close the punctuality deficit by arriving earlier than 0800hrs, at every opportunity. I have managed to peg back the deficit from a low of 580 minutes to what it is today viz. 182 minutes.
It may even be in order to make a comparison between the number of days that I've been punctual versus the number of days I haven't:
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Public Policy in AJK connecting with the world's experts in the subject at the London School of Economics:
I am sending my co-citizens this link at a critical stage of our journey towards nationhood and statehood in AJK and ultimately JKA. The 'London School of Economics' describes itself as the world's best institution for the study of Public Policy.
We now have an opportunity to enrol on an online course in our favourite and most appropriate discipline. It is also an opportunity to test our technical aptitude in this subject and compare our on-the-ground experience of 17 years and 5 months with the best of what's available in the world.
The cost to the public: c. $1,300 (US dollars)
We would also like to take this opportunity to give a broad outline of what is required from our people to design and develop a world class system of governance in AJK:
Manpower:
1,771 - human/data management professionals
Annual Budget:
£20 million (Pound sterling) or equivalent to c. 5 billion PK rupees.
*We are converting at the rate of 250 PK rupees to the pound for simplicity. The actual rate today is c. 258
The past 75 years of occupation/administration/control by others of JKA, connected to the prevailing absence of governance in AJK coupled with the naked priorities of self interest prevalent within our public, may suggest that the broad outline given above is impractical or even illegal.
Practicality:
There are over 5 million people living in or from AJK. At least 40% (over 2 million people) of them have at least a middle-class standard of living or live above subsistence level. What we require is for 100,000 of them to pay a voluntary tax of £200 or c. 50,000 PK rupees in a year. Which amounts to less than 55 pence or less than 137 PK rupees a day.
Legality:
It should be common knowledge amongst our people that JKA is not legally or constitutionally part of any other country. The British Indian empire did not transfer suzerainty or sovereignty of this territory to any other country and neither did they retain it themselves. Furthermore, all the countries that claim or monitor this territory have conditioned their presence or involvement on the local people's reference. It is also clear that these inhabitants hold title to this territory. The Srinagar/Jammu Assembly doesn't exist in practice and the Assemblies in Gilgit and Muzaffarabad do not conform to international law (or the UN template on this region) and are not even recognised as an executive authority by their sponsor Pakistan.
Thus, we - the people - are the masters of our own destiny. We have been waiting for the world to help us and we never gave serious thought to help ourselves or more appropriately, each other.
We have little time to waste and obviously this governance initiative cannot be implemented by force. The most this action-oriented researcher can do is publicly list those co-citizens who are familiar with this struggle for freedom & world class governance and have the means to finance it, yet deliberately refuse to do so.
I didn't finish the translation of the 'missing historic links of Sharda', until 0900hrs this morning. I had been working on it intermittently for the past week and reached the last pages at some point after midnight and just kept going.....
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I have much to add on Kanwal Matloob - an 11 year old orphaned girl - alleged to have been brutally raped and murdered by a citizen from the neighbouring territory, about exactly a month ago. She was categorised as missing by her family on the evening of the 8th of November (2021), when she had failed to return home from the local bazaar near Pachwana, Kataar (in rural Dadyaal), where she had gone at about 1600hrs (4pm) that day. Subsequently, local 'law enforcement agencies' took about 25 days to 'solve' the crime and bring in the suspect for due legal process.
Background:
It is reported that this young child was pounced on at a relatively remote stream between her home and her local bazaar by the alleged perpetrator (who hails from Faislabad in Pakistan and who had spent the last 2 years working at a tent service run by his own brother in this area). It is also reported that he then dragged her to an even more remote area (the crime scene can be seen in the following video):
After raping her, he hacked off her head from her body using stones and then concealed her in the foliage seen above. It is also reported that he continued to visit this 'crime' scene for the next 4 days and also began using acid to prevent the young corpse's odour from spreading.
It is then reported that he left the area and was traced through CCTV footage of the local bazaar and tallying of telecommunications data of the area. He was picked up from Lahore in Pakistan, while 2 of his brothers were in police custody, under investigation. The police have stated publicly that under police interrogation the alleged perpetrator of this crime disclosed the location where he had committed this heinous crime and dumped her body.
Whatever the process, it wasn't until the 3rd of December that what had actually happened to Kanwal Matloob started to surface in the public domain.
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We'll begin today's proceedings with this live video captured for JKTV. It runs for about 30 minutes and takes in the movement of the crowd from HBL Chowk in Aara Jattan to its destination at Maqbool Bhat Shaheed Square. It emerged that this crowd possibly provided an example of a level of unprecedented mass mobilisation of the public in Dadyaal:
The following video captured from elsewhere provides a clearer snapshot of the procession converging on Maqbool Bhat Shaheed Square, courtesy Imran Shehzad Chugtai:
In the next video, it can also be gauged that this wasn't just an unprecedented gathering of men but women too, who were given the space within Maqbool Bhat Shaheed Square itself. The size and prolonged presence of the crowd also forced the local administration to engage in a question and answer session here:
Then a video interview - taken towards the end of today's protest - by Tayyab Kashmiri, for his very popular Youtube channel (other videos of his have been referenced earlier in today's post too) is presented here:
Having closely monitored the speeches of all notable figures of Dadyaal - present at today's unprecedented protest - I felt it important to introduce a public policy approach to these oft repeated crimes and the lack of justice emanating from the administrative and judicial procedure adopted.
Here I interview Iftikhar Siddiqui, who was most instrumental in generating such a crowd under the platform of Sada e Haq (Voice of Truth), which he founded:
On Youtube:
On Facebook (JKTV):
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On this very day, something important of an academic nature was happening in London. At least, it was hosted in London and by a platform on Facebook created by the London School of Economics, namely LSE Ideas:
I did make use of the right to ask questions directly to the panel, during the discussion, via text.
