{"id":35408,"date":"2013-07-18T17:44:22","date_gmt":"2013-07-18T12:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pamirtimes.net\/?p=35408"},"modified":"2013-07-18T17:44:22","modified_gmt":"2013-07-18T12:44:22","slug":"education-the-only-cure-for-gilgit-baltistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pamirtimes.net\/tg\/2013\/07\/18\/education-the-only-cure-for-gilgit-baltistan\/","title":{"rendered":"Education: The only cure for Gilgit-Baltistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zaheer Abbas<\/strong><\/p>\n

After the passage of more than 60 years since its inception, Gilgit-Balitistan is still deprived of its due right of constitutional representation. With no representation in the upper and lower house of the parliament, the inhabitants of this mountainous region are all dependent on others\u2019 representatives who are sitting in the parliament. In these circumstances, people from GB do not expect much from the parliament, but then important question which comes to mind is, why are they not struggling for this due right like they did against the Dogra armed forces? The reason behind is very simple. They are not united as one body like they were before the so called \u2018independence\u2019. They are suffering from internal divisions. Among these divisions, the sectarian divide between Shia and Sunni sect, is of serious concern that, has engulfed the nation. Local residents also blame the \u201cexternal elements\u201d which, according to them, try to infuriate the existing deteriorated situation for their benefits.<\/p>\n

Education, which can play a crucial role to curtail the diversities and making nation united, is unfortunately at scarce among the parts most vulnerable to these external elements. However, G-B in overall, keeping in mind its limited resources and education facilities, is performing better in education attainments as compared to other provinces. During a recent study conducted by Alif Ailaan, on district education rankings throughout the country, puts Gilgit-Baltistan at the third position in terms of education score. Despite the poor condition of school facilities, according to the report, this region is out performing all of the, comparatively well facilitated, provinces of Pakistan excluding Punjab, even it is not far behind Punjab with a minor difference in terms of education score.<\/p>\n

\"Table1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Apart from the interprovincial disparities, Gilgit Baltistan is also facing intra provincial disparities in terms of educational facilities as well as educational attainments as depicted in the above graph. The extent of disparities can be visualized from the fact that, according to Alif Ailaan report, Hunza Nagar one of the eight districts of G-B stood at the 9th,<\/sup> while Diamer district of the same province is at 136 position in terms of education score (attainments), among the national rankings of 140 districts in total. This is not only limited to education attainments, the case is even worse in terms of educational facilities which have been captured through school index, where Diamer is the district suffering most from the lack of education facilities among all of the 144 districts of the country.<\/p>\n

It is also important to mention here that, Diamer is the same district where number of sadistic incidents had happened in the near past. During the month of April last year, numbers of passengers had been killed, by a local mob, while they were on their way back home. Not only this, the tragic incident in which 11 foreign tourists had been brutally massacred near fairy meadows which also happened to be in the same district. These all are, no doubt, the consequences of the lack of education to my understanding.<\/p>\n

The national government, however, is not responsible alone for these educational disparities, provincial government, I must say, is also part of the crime. After 18th<\/sup> amendment, education has been devolved to the provinces and it is the provincial government which, now, is responsible to fortify the institution of education in the respective provinces. By introducing article 25-A in the constitution, according to which government is responsible for the education of all children from 5-16 years of age, Parliament has, to some extent played its role of policy formulation. Now it is the turn of the provincial governments to play their role.<\/p>\n

The contributor is a Research Associate at Idara-e-Talim-o-Aagahi (ITA).\u00a0<\/sup><\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zaheer Abbas After the passage of more than 60 years since its inception, Gilgit-Balitistan is still deprived of its due right of constitutional representation. With no representation in the upper and lower house of the parliament, the inhabitants of this mountainous region are all dependent on others\u2019 representatives who are sitting in the parliament. In …<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs-op-ed"],"better_featured_image":{"id":35409,"alt_text":"","caption":"","description":"","media_type":"image","media_details":{"width":617,"height":298,"file":"2013\/07\/Table1.jpg","sizes":{"thumbnail":{"file":"Table1-250x250.jpg","width":250,"height":250,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","source_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pamirtimes.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Table1.jpg?resize=250%2C250&ssl=1"},"medium":{"file":"Table1-450x217.jpg","width":450,"height":217,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","source_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pamirtimes.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Table1.jpg?fit=450%2C217&ssl=1"},"large":{"file":"Table1-600x289.jpg","width":600,"height":289,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","source_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pamirtimes.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Table1.jpg?fit=600%2C289&ssl=1"},"post-thumbnail":{"file":"Table1-50x50.jpg","width":50,"height":50,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","source_url":"https:\/\/pamirtimes.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Table1-50x50.jpg"},"415x260":{"file":"Table1-415x260.jpg","width":415,"height":260,"source_url":"https:\/\/pamirtimes.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Table1-415x260.jpg"},"150x150":{"file":"Table1-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"source_url":"https:\/\/pamirtimes.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Table1-150x150.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":0,"credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":0,"copyright":"","focal_length":0,"iso":0,"shutter_speed":0,"title":""}},"post":35408,"source_url":"https:\/\/pamirtimes.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Table1.jpg"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pamirtimes.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Table1.jpg?fit=617%2C298&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pamirtimes.net\/tg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pamirtimes.net\/tg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pamirtimes.net\/tg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pamirtimes.net\/tg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pamirtimes.net\/tg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35408"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pamirtimes.net\/tg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35411,"href":"https:\/\/pamirtimes.net\/tg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35408\/revisions\/35411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pamirtimes.net\/tg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pamirtimes.net\/tg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pamirtimes.net\/tg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pamirtimes.net\/tg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}