Cameron's multi-million gamble to win Pakistani minds

Prime minister reveals willingness to work with spy agencies but urges Pakistan to 'make its wealthy pay more tax'

David Cameron has taken a calculated and expensive diplomatic gamble by agreeing to put his faith in the Pakistani security services to help Britain leave Afghanistan, in the hope of preventing the export of terrorism to Britain.

Nearly half of the terrorist plots against Britain come from Pakistan's lawless north-west frontiers.

On a visit to Islamabad, Cameron promised £650m in aid to fund 4 million school places, 90,000 teachers, and refurbishment of 8,000 schools, arguing that education is the best antidote to terror. Pakistan is now the largest beneficiary of UK aid.

Cameron said he could justify the move domestically only if the Pakistani elite paid more taxes. He said bluntly, in a speech, that Pakistan suffered from "weaknesses in terms of government capacity and waste".

But he revealed a new willingness to work with Pakistani intelligence agencies to secure a political settlement in Afghanistan before Britain leaves in 2015.

A year ago, Cameron put UK-Pakistan relations in deep-freeze by criticising the Pakistanis for facing both ways in the fight against terror.

On Tuesday he talked of a fresh start and a new era of co-operation.

British officials say they are now convinced that the growing internal Islamist terrorist threat inside the country has caused the intelligence service, the ISI, to take a tougher role in combating the Taliban and al-Qaida inside Pakistan. British officials said the Pakistani prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, and the president, Asif Ali Zardari, recognised they were involved in "an existential battle" with terrorists.

During his one-day visit, Cameron offered the president unprecedented intelligence co-operation and agreed to set up a joint "centre of excellence" in Pakistan to exchange knowledge on improvised explosive devices.

He also sought to reassure his hosts that he does not see India as Britain's preferred partner in the region. He set a goal of Anglo-Pakistani trade rising from £1.9 bn to £2.5bn by 2015.

In a sign of the importance of the trip to UK national security, Cameron was accompanied by Sir Peter Ricketts, the national security adviser, Sir David Richards, the chief of the defence staff, and Sir John Sawers, head of MI6. The three were in Islamabad only a month ago to prepare the ground for what is being billed as an "enhanced security dialogue". The aim was to build a less transactional relationship, officials said, and to work on the basis of broader, long-term trust.

At a joint press conference, Gilani said: "I want to assure you that Pakistan has the resolve and the commitment to fight against extremism and terrorism. We've paid a heavy price for that."

He pointed out that 30,000 civilians had been killed and a similar number disabled.

He said: "The political leadership has been targeted. The bombs have gone off in girls' schools, hospitals, the malls, the police stations and even in the intelligence service headquarters."

Cameron praised his hosts: "What you see in Pakistan is a huge fight by the government taking place against terrorism."

He defended the size of the projected aid package, saying he would "struggle to find an example of a country" whose progress and success were more in Britain's national interest than were those of Pakistan.

But, unusually, he challenged Pakistan by pointing out that it currently spends only 1.5% of national income on education, and has one of the lowest tax revenues, relative to GDP, of any country in the world.

"You are not raising the resources necessary to pay for things that a modern state and people require," he said. "Too few people pay tax. Too many of your richest people are getting away without paying much tax at all. And that's not fair." British officials indicated that they had asked the Pakistan military as diplomatically as possible when it planned to enter North Waziristan, the tribal heartland and sanctuary from which many terrorist groups operate.

British intelligence and the CIA consider the region to be the place where suicide bombings and cross-border attacks originate.

Cameron made a partial reference in his speech, saying: "Neither the Pakistan army nor Nato forces must ever tolerate sanctuaries for people plotting violence."

The Pakistani army has suffered big losses as a result of clearing out other federally administered tribal areas, and seems to be holding back from tackling North Waziristan, partly due to a peace deal having been struck.

Pakistani troops moved into South Waziristan in 2009. Pakistan says it lacks military capacity to lead an assault on a mountainous area that could lead to a mass exodus of refugees.

In the absence of troops on the ground, Britain supports what it sees as the highly effective use of US unmanned drones to bomb terrorist targets in the area, a practice that Pakistani politicians regularly denounce as being counter-productive and in breach of their sovereignty, and leading to the slaughter of innocent tribal elders. Only last week, Pakistan pulled out of tripartite talks on Afghanistan in anger at the US attacks.

Since 2007, about 164 drone strikes have been carried out, killing almost 1,000 militants.

• This article was amended on 6 April 2011. The original reported the promised education-aid total as £950m. This figure was provisionally reduced after the Guardian was contacted by the Department for International Development. Further clarification is being sought. The original article also said that the aid package included funding for 8,000 teachers. This has been corrected.

source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/apr/05/david-cameron-pakistan

GLOBAL: What international students want to study

Predicting where future international students will come from and what subjects they go abroad to study has become a mini-industry in receiving countries such as Britain and Australia, where some courses are highly dependent on overseas student fees.

Delegates and experts at the British Council's Going Global conference, held in Hong Kong from 11-12 March, agreed that demand for overseas courses from Asian students will carry on rising.

"Overall demand for international education will continue to grow in the low single digits in the next decade," said Tony Pollock (pictured), Chief Executive of IDP Education, an international student placement service.

However, subject choices may be changing as sending countries like China and India become more affluent, students from Singapore prefer to study at their own excellent universities and Malaysia reduces the number of government scholarships for students on expensive overseas courses.

Medicine and related courses in the West have long been popular with students from India, Malaysia and Hong Kong, while business-related degrees and engineering have been the top choice for students from China, Taiwan and Vietnam.

This is according to a survey of 5,000 prospective international students in 14 countries by Hotcourses, a web-based company that advises students on course choice internationally. 

Students from Pakistan are looking for high quality courses in engineering and technology, and Indonesian students are looking at the natural sciences. 

South Korean students, on the other hand, go abroad to study creative arts and design, while students from India and Malaysia are interested in social sciences and communications, said Mike Elms, Chief Executive of Hotcourses. 

However, patterns are changing in key markets such as China, which last year sent 440,000 students to study abroad, overtaking India as the top sending country.

Prospective students from major Chinese cities may be broadening out the subjects they want to study abroad, according to research by the British Council - information which could also be important for decisions by a number newly emerging regional higher educational hubs on what courses to offer to attract international students. 

The British Council's Education Intelligence Unit research into prospective students' intentions in the coming years found that there have been shifts in the most popular subjects chosen for study in the UK in the last two to three years. 

Students from China are still most likely to study business administration and engineering and technology at overseas universities, but growth in the number of students selecting these subjects is slowing while students from China wanting to study mass communication and documentation, and creative arts and design, has shown much bigger growth. 

"We were trying to capture the student decision-making process before the student embarks on a course," said Janet Illieva, head of research at the British Council in Hong Kong. "For China we have seen decreased demand for engineering."

"There has been a shift in demand towards non-traditional subjects in China at the city level," she said. This was most evident in large cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. "We think this is because of the rise in the middle class in these cities. While in the medium-sized cities, there is definitely a rise in those who say they want to study engineering." 

For example, one in four prospective international students in the city of Shenyang want to pursue engineering. In Nanjing, Xi'an and Chengdu the rise was 17% to 18%, taking over where Beijing was a decade ago. These are also cities where there has been a rise in heavy industry and manufacturing, Illieva said.

Students from China saying they want to study mass communication has risen by 81% since 2008, a possible reflection of the burgeoning use of the internet. Prospective Chinese students wanting to study creative arts has risen by 54% during the same period, compared to 25% to 29% growth for business and engineering. Architecture, building and planning has seen 35% growth in interest from China in the last two years. 

Mass communication has soared to become the third most popular choice for Chinese students wanting to study overseas, rising from 8th most popular in 2006-07. Creative arts has risen to fifth place behind social studies compared to ninth place in 2006-07.

The findings have implications for universities hoping to replace declining applications at home with students from overseas, particularly in science and engineering. 

But Hotcourses' Mike Elms said the key motivator for students looking for courses abroad is "to get a better education. They want a higher quality course than is available to them in their own (education) market," he said.

source:http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20110318130504251

'I stayed calm right until the end!' - scholarship winner describes his success

In May 2009 our parent organisation, Cambridge Assessment, launched a scholarship to enable students from Pakistan to take up their place at the University of Cambridge without the worry of creating a financial burden for their families.

We recently met one of the first winners of the University of Cambridge 800th Anniversary Scholarships – Zulifqar Ali – who started his Politics, Psychology and Sociology degree at Queens College last September.

Zulfiqar (pictured) was thrilled to discover he’d won a scholarship in February 2010. He said he would not have been able to take up his place at the University without it. So how did it happen?

'My school, Karachi Grammar, supported me throughout my application to the University,' he said. 'I applied for a scholarship and was interviewed in Dubai last October. I watched lots of online lectures to help me prepare for the interview and broaden my horizons. The interview was really stimulating. There were two interviewers on the panel and they asked me to think about things in different ways – such as the role psychology plays in politics. You really need to be able to back up your ideas. Nothing is wrong as long as you can support your arguments. I felt nervous, but I stayed calm right up until the last minute.'

Inspired by Cambridge

Zulifqar met the entry requirements for the University having achieved impressive grades in his Cambridge International A Levels. He also participated in a wide range of extra-curricular activities, including debating, sports, and guitar lessons, and won six Outstanding Cambridge Learner Awards. We asked him how he is finding life at Cambridge:

'This is my first time in England. I have always felt a connection to Cambridge. At school our books were published by Cambridge University Press, and then I studied Cambridge exams. Everyone in Pakistan knows the University of Cambridge. It’s amazing to be here and to study alongside some of the smartest people in the world.

'The tutors at Cambridge are really inspiring. They can ignite your interest in something so that you want to go off and do more research into it on your own. At school the focus was on exams, at university it’s about working on your own and developing your own knowledge.'

Zulifqar says that his Cambridge International A Levels helped him prepare for university: 'They taught me how to think critically which is helping with my university studies. They gave me analysis skills too.'

Just go for it!

So what is his advice to fellow students in Pakistan? 'If you want to study at the University of Cambridge, don’t be put off by the financial barriers,’ he says. 'If you believe in working hard, you should apply for Cambridge and one of the scholarships. Cambridge offers amazing opportunities – both academic and socially.'

Good luck to Zulifqar with his studies, and we wish him every success with his ambitions to become a lawyer. Cambridge Assessment is pleased to fund the University of Cambridge 800th Anniversary Scholarships, and we encourage other students in Pakistan to apply.

source:http://www.cie.org.uk/news/features/detail?feature_id=37414

Pakistan schools campaign hopes to avert 'education emergency'

British-backed initiative aims to help overhaul a system that has left seven million children without primary education

Schoolchildren in Karachi. Pakistan has admitted it is failing to reach its UN education commitments

With millions of children out of school and one-fifth of teachers playing truant, Pakistan faces an "education emergency" that costs the economic equivalent of its flood disaster every year, a new campaign has warned.

The March for Education campaign, launched with British government backing, deploys stark statistics to draw a picture of a chronically ill system.

One in 10 of the world's out-of-school children live in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state that last year spent just 2% of GDP on education.

The number of children absent from primary school – seven million – is roughly equivalent to the population of its second largest city, Lahore.

Half of the population is illiterate and progress is painfully slow – at present rates the government will not deliver universal education in Balochistan, the largest province, until 2100.

"It's a challenge of global dimensions," said campaign spokesman Fasi Zaka.

The campaign calls on Pakistanis to petition the prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, to double education spending. Oddly, the campaign comes from within government itself – a sign, officials say, of how serious the problem has become.

"When half your population has no skills or education, it's a serious issue of state security," said Shahnaz Wazir Ali, co-chair of the government taskforce behind the campaign. "That's why we're going public with this. It's not just a government issue, it's a society issue."

Campaigners want to raise awareness in a country that is becoming dangerously polarised. Pakistan's elite educates its offspring at expensive schools in Pakistan or abroad, and so education has slipped off the political agenda.

The taskforce estimates an extra £725m a year is needed to gets the school system into shape. But money is not the main issue. At least 26 poorer countries send more children to school, but Pakistan's system has been eviscerated by decades of cronyism and mismanagement.

Politicians use schools as patronage, and although public teachers are relatively well-paid, 15%-20% are absent from class on any given day.

"There's very little accountability," said Wazir Ali, whose co-chair is Sir Michael Barber, a former education adviser to Tony Blair.

Critics said the campaign fails to focus on the outdated curriculum in Pakistani schools that promotes a narrow view of Islam, hatred of Hindus and other bigotry.

"The emergency is not that there's too little education but that there's an excess of miseducation," said Pervez Hoodbhoy, an academic and campaigner. "Decades ago there was less literacy and fewer students in schools. But children were not fed their daily diet of hate, and open minds were more welcome than today."

Under constitutional changes introduced last April, education became a right for all Pakistanis under 16. But the country is lagging far behind its south Asian neighbours. India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka say they are on track to meet their education commitments under the UN's millennium development goals programme by 2015; Pakistan has already admitted failure.

Last week UK development secretary Andrew Mitchell announced a huge aid injection to provide Pakistan with an extra four million school places and 90,000 new teachers by 2015. But a large proportion of the money will go into the booming private education sector, especially in Punjab province, in the hope of bypassing the creaking public school sector.

The campaign hopes to invigorate debate by publishing British-style education league tables, broken down by constituency. But it has stoked controversy over its claim to debunk myths about the country's controversial madrasa sector.

Just 6% of Pakistani children attend such religious schools, the campaign says – a figure critics say is too high.

"It's a staggering number," said Hoodbhoy, calling for an education system that "demands questioning, teaches skills and downplays indoctrination in favour of knowledge and enlightenment".

source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/08/pakistan-faces-education-emergency

Pakistan situation to be discussed at Jamia seminar

New Delhi: Six eminent scholars from Pakistan, the UK and Sweden will participate in a two-day international seminar on "The State of Pakistan" on Thursday organized by the Jamia Millia Islamia.

The main objective of the seminar is to discuss and understand politics and the state in Pakistan. 

"In recent years, the concerns about Pakistan's security and stability have been so overwhelming that the politics of Pakistan has not received adequate attention," a press statement said.

The event is organized by the Pakistan StudiesProgramme at the Academy of Third World Studies in Jamia. 

"The seminar will focus on the significant political developments in Pakistan and it will help gain deeper in sights into the new developments and challenges the country is facing today," the statement added.

source:http://indiaedunews.net/Delhi/Pakistan_situation_to_be_discussed_at_Jamia_seminar_13572/

Panjab varsity to hold first alumni meet on Saturday

 Panjab University (PU), one of the oldest universities in the country that is PrimeMinister Manmohan Singh's alma mater, is organizing its first university-level alumni meet on Saturday.

Jammu and Kashmir Governor N.N. Vohra will deliver the inaugural address at the meet and several former students are expected to participate.

PU's Dean-Alumni Relations Bhupinder Singh Bhoop said around 225 alumni of 1970 batch and previous ones will be honored on the occasion.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been a former student as well as a faculty member of the economics department in the PU in 1950s and '60s. However, he is unlikely to participate in the event this time.

Various teaching departments of the university will also be holding events to mark the alumni meet.

Panjab University was established in 1882 at Lahore (now in Pakistan). It shifted to its present campus in Chandigarh's Sector 14 in late 1950s. It is now spread over an area of 550 acres in sectors 14 and 25 of Chandigarh.

The university has 75 teaching and research departments and 15 centres and chairs for teaching and research at the main campus located at Chandigarh.

PU has 188 affiliated colleges across Punjab and has three regional centres at Muktsar, Ludhiana and Hoshiarpur. It also has one regional rural centre in Punjab.

source:http://indiaedunews.net/Punjab/Panjab_varsity_to_hold_first_alumni_meet_on_Saturday_13542/

India's Best Student: Dr. Manmohan Singh

The Prime Minister stood first in class throughout his academic life.

Whenever he was asked for the secret of his professional success Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would say only one thing, “I am what I am because of my education.”

He has often thanked his family for ensuring that he went right up to college and then had opportunities to win many scholarships that finally helped him get a PhD from Oxford University.

Manmohan Singh was born into a family of modest means in the village of Gah in Pakistan. For the first 12 years of his life he lived there, a village which had no electricity, no school, no hospital, no piped drinking water.

He walked for miles every day to school and studied at night in the dim light of a kerosene lamp. When asked once why he had poor eyesight he confessed that it was because he had spent hours reading books in that dim light.

It was his hard work that enabled him to finish his schooling and attend college in Amritsar, where he lived after the Partition. He then won a scholarship to go to Cambridge University in England to do his Master’s in Economics. Another scholarship helped him complete his PhD.

He won the coveted Adam Smith Prize in Economics for his outstanding academic record. He always stood first and was a brilliant student.

For all his brilliance, he was a very shy boy. He once told Mark Tully, the famous BBC correspondent in India, that throughout his stay in Cambridge he used to bathe with cold water because the moment hot water was available in the hostel all the other students would come in to bathe and he felt shy to show them his long hair.

As the only Sikh student in the hostel he felt inhibited to remove his turban in front of others. It is this shy boy who became the darling of his teachers because he was such a good student.

He returned to India to teach at his college in Amritsar. One day, his neighbour, renowned writer Mulk Raj Anand, took him to meet Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Panditji asked him to join the government. But he had a commitment to teach at the college and so he could not accept that offer.

Later, when he was working at the United Nations under the famous economist Raul Prebisch, he got an offer to join Delhi School of Economics as a lecturer. He immediately accepted that invitation and decided to return to India. Dr. Prebisch was shocked. So many brilliant economists would be delighted to get a UN job and this young man was giving it up to teach in India? “You are being foolish,” Prebisch told Manmohan Singh, adding, “But, sometimes in life it is wise to be foolish!”

Manmohan Singh returned home first to teach and then to work in the Government.

He has held every important job in the field of economic policy making in India: Chief Economic Advisor to Government of India, Finance Secretary, Governor, Reserve Bank of India, Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, Union Finance Minister and now Prime Minister.

In 2005 when he visited Kaula Lumpur for the India-ASEAN Summit he was introduced at the ASEAN Business Forum meeting as “the world’s most qualified Head of Government”!

That is what makes us all proud. No country in the world has a more qualified head of government and India has never had such a highly qualified Prime Minister. Manmohan Singh’s life is a record of excellence and of merit being rewarded. His life will always be an inspiration to young people who want to work hard and achieve something based on their learning.

No rich parents, no influential uncles, no wealth, no inheritance, no one to pull strings and ‘put in a word’ – it was always his merit, his hard work, his honesty, his intelligence and, above all, his deep love for India that energised him. Every young Indian should feel inspired by the life of Manmohan Singh!

Sanjaya Baru served as media advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from 2004 to 2008, and is currently Editor at Business Standard.

source :http://in.education.yahoo.com/news/yeducareers360/indias-best-student-dr-manmohan-singh-20110201

Delhi feels tremors as quake hits SW Pakistan

New Delhi, Jan 19 (PTI) A powerful earthquake of 7.4 magnitude struck southwestern Pakistan in the small hours of the day, tremors of which were felt in parts of northwestern India, including the national capital.

Delhiites rushed outside their homes in the wee hours of the chilly night as tremors were felt in the capital.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) said the epicentre of the earthquake was located in southwestern Pakistan in the desert area bordering Iran and Afghanistan.

"It was a shallow earthquake which struck at a depth of 7.4 km," an IMD official said.

The epicentre of the quake was located at 28.9 degrees north on the latitude and 64 degrees east on the longitude, the IMD said.

A US Geological Service report said the epicentre of the earthquake was located 45 km from Dalbandin in Southwest Pakistan. It said the focal depth of the earthquake was 84 km.

There was no immediate report of any loss of life or property.

A 7.6 magnitude earthquake had devastated northern Pakistan and parts of Kashmir in October 2008, killing thousands of people.