November 2013: I facilitated a panel on economic growth within natural limits hosted by the Center for Poverty Analysis (CEPA) in Colombo.
My presentation is here: Economic growth within natural limits.
Continue reading Presentation: Symposium on inclusive growth, Colombo
May 2013: Alif Ailaan – a DfID funded, education focused data and advocacy campaign – and the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) – an Islamabad based Pakistani think tank launched the first ever Pakistan District Education Rankings in May of 2013.
I was the lead author on the report and led the data team which collated the data and produced the report. The rankings were based on a similar approach used by UNESCO for their international education index. The data were gathered from two government and one private datasets and two different education indices were calculated.
Continue reading Research: Alif Ailaan Pakistan district education rankings 2013
April 23, 2013: This column was published in Dawn.
In the shadow of a half-constructed multi-story plaza between two empty plots strewn with construction rubble, sits a shabby looking shed of concrete blocks and corrugated iron roof.
Inside, under the pale glow of an energy saver light bulb sits a shalwar kameez clad grade-7 official tapping away at a battered desktop computer. Meet Mr Kaleem (real names have been changed on request), secretary of his union council in Sialkot. He is surrounded by some locals with documents to be attested or corrected.
April 15, 2013: This column was published in Dawn.
A number of months have now passed since the apparently coordinated attacks in Karachi and Peshawar which left five health workers and volunteers dead.
The deceased — mostly young women — were working on a national campaign for the eradication of polio, coordinated by provincial and federal governments.
As a response to the attacks, the governments of Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa suspended the campaign for a short period, while the United Nations removed some of its field personnel until they could receive guarantees of better security.
Jan – Feb, 2013: From 2012 to 2014 I worked on monitoring and evaluation for the AAWAZ programme (for the Sustainable Development Policy Institute) in Islamabad. AAWAZ was a DfID social accountability program which was to expand to 45 districts across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Punjab by the end of its first five years in 2017.
July 19, 2012: This column was originally published in Dawn.
Earlier this year officials at the federal Ministry of Finance and the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) had a disagreement.
The disagreement was due to a rebasing (changing the base year, a statistical procedure required to discount economic indicators for inflation) that the PBS had recently conducted and with which the finance ministry was not pleased. It changed the base fiscal year from 1999-00 to 2005-06.
July 3, 2012: This column was originally published in Dawn.
They tried devolving it but the courts and coalitionists blocked them. They’ve been starving it for funds but it still hobbles along. Now they want to bring it to heel.
It has been this way for the Higher Education Commission (HEC) ever since the 18th Amendment devolved the federal role in education to the provinces two years ago.
June 13, 2012: This column was originally published in Dawn.
The finance minister, Dr Hafeez Shaikh, had barely completed his truncated budget speech that word spread around Islamabad about an imminent approach to the International Monetary Fund for more financing.
In fact, Dr Shaikh hinted as much soon after. Of course, this has not come as a surprise to regular observers of Pakistan.
June 9, 2012: This column was published in Dawn.
There has been some debate in these pages recently about the ideal language of educational instruction.
One side argues that English is the lingua franca of the world. Never before has a language been as widely used as the common language of business, government and science. Increasingly, it is the language of higher and technical learning.
May 8, 2011: This column was originally published in Dawn on the 8th of May, 2011.
I never read Three Cups of Tea. Something about its ‘white man stumbles upon brown misery, then sets about correcting it using his all-American heartland gusto’ narrative did not sit well with me.
I also found that the optimism generated by the fawning over Mr Mortenson, the author, grated with my pessimism about our education system. Continue reading Op-ed: Storm in a teacup
Asif Saeed Memon 