Moalims

During the past few days, Dr Nergis Mavalvala was in the news for being part of a team, which had made a historic scientific discovery by detecting gravitational waves. Her Pakistani background was highlighted and celebrated. Everyone from the prime minister downwards expressed their pride at her achievement. However, the fact that Dr Mavalvala’s success is not reflective of the state of education and scientific innovation in Pakistan was largely ignored. This point has now been brought home by the Global Innovation Index Report of 2015 in which Pakistan ranks an abysmal 131 out of 141 countries. This is not surprising, since according to the Ministry of Science and Technology, the current allocation for research and development is only 0.29 per cent of GDP. There is no clearer way than this to indicate our lack of interest in higher education and science. This, after all, is the country which tried to give the world the car that ran on water.

Pakistanis have managed to do great work in a variety of highly demanding and technical fields but usually they do it when outside their homeland. The infrastructure and money required for quality education and research is simply unavailable here. There are only 10,670 PhDs in the country, a tiny number, especially when considering that according to HEC guidelines a university is required to have atleast two PhD faculty members in order to offer MPhil and MS programmes. In order for there to be innovation, educational institutions should have a culture promoting curiosity and critical thinking. Unfortunately, the current atmosphere only encourages the attainment of the highest grades through the retention of facts memorised from books. Questioning conventional wisdom and forming independent conclusions are not encouraged. The Ministry of Science and Technology now claims to have developed a strategy to reverse this trend. One can only hope that it will be implemented and the next Dr Mavalvala will not have to move abroad to make a scientific breakthrough.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 20th, 2016.