Columns

Reading has its own universe, where imagination is a telescope, the pleasure of reading and wandering in the world through the passport of a book, read a Poem by a gigantic intellectual, ’I am the Rebel‘.

An old Postal ticket reminds the rebel poet. Pakistan post office issued a postal stamp on 25 June 1968 of 15 and 30 paisa to honour the progressive poet and an intellectual, whereas India issued a postal ticket in 1999 and he is revered as a national poet of Bangladesh. The socialist ideology echoed from past to present and to the future.

Think about a world without music. It would be a place quite different and hard to identify with the world we live in because music is an integral and defining part of human existence. It is a great unifier and symboliser. Through the ages, humanity has explored music for a variety of purposes. It has been used for religious rituals, for cultural representations, entertainment, education, for social interaction, for setting agendas and context switching, for colouring actions and events, for business; the list can be unending.

There are legends, myths and theories about the origin of music but, strangely, no one knows how human being discovered or created music. The most plausible explanation can be the theory of articulation of sounds of nature. Early homo-sapiens learned to communicate and express themselves with the help of sounds they learned from nature and those inarticulate sounds and tones evolved into music.

In a time where everyone agrees education is the key to growth and betterment, Pakistan has made it extremely difficult to go forward. Sure, we have some of the best universities and colleges, even schools when it comes down to it, but has anyone considered what comes with the cost of education as well?

Picture this; a family belonging to a small rural city send their child to get an education from a metropolis city like Lahore. You wouldn’t expect the whole family to shift with that one 18-year-old would you? Of course not. The family will stay back to earn and the kids will go and complete their education.

Most colleges or universities do not have as many hostels as the number of students applying and thus a few remain behind without any accommodations hundreds of kilometers away from home. They decide to get a place nearby and pay rent while they study. Sounds easy, right? It isn’t.

The incumbent Pakistani government is acting serious about several financially promising sectors that could revitalize the staggering economy. They presume that the preceding regimes willfully did not strive to preserve and strengthen institutional sanctity by nurturing non-professional and nepotism-based hirings of the workforce in the vital national institutions. Therefore, they have taken the chance to revitalize the neglected but potentially important sectors, and one of these sectors that have been emphatically highlighted is fisheries and aquaculture.

Pakistan has 1120 kilometers long coastal belt and 350 nautical miles of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) that extends unique and highly promising growth potential in several ways. Furthermore, we are rich in prolific inland freshwater resources with more excellent prospects of a blue revolution in Pakistan. Presently, the fisheries and aquaculture sector and ancillary industries provide bread and butter to more than a million Pakistani families.

Pursuing higher education has always been a privilege for most Pakistanis until HEC was founded in the early 2000s by the government of Pakistan. HEC designed assessment tests and ways to provide qualified people scholarships at home and abroad to pursue higher education i.e. masters, PhDs, and post-doctorates via programs like overseas Pakistani scholarships (OSS), faculty development program (FDP), indigenous scholarship program, cultural exchange program and commonwealth program among others.

I have had the opportunity to apply for most of these programs, where I qualified for an indigenous scholarship four times, FDP once, commonwealth once, applied for OSS thrice, and appeared in its interview once. Although, I couldn’t secure any of these scholarships due to personal reasons or political and administrative hurdles. Finally, when I was serving as a faculty member at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST), I secured a foreign scholarship in a Top-100 university in 2015 and completed my PhD in 2018.