Born to Abdul Rashid Khan, a leather worker, in Lahore in 1960, Nazim Khan (now James Caan) is a British Pakistani investor, entrepreneur, television personality, and a philanthropist. The Khan (not Caan) family moved to the East End of London in 1962, when Caan was two. His father started a business of making leather jackets and, in his youth, Caan worked for his father. He left school without qualifications at the age of 16, and left home shortly afterwards to pursue his ambitions of founding a business. He went to Harvard Business School at 40.

At 12 he knew he was going to become an entrepreneur. "My father never understood why I didn’t join the family business. When I opened the 100th global office of my company he said maybe it was the right thing for me to do," he says.

He is the founder and CEO of Hamilton Bradshaw, a UK-based private equity company. He also founded Alexander Mann, a multinational recruitment company, and co-founded Humana International, a multinational headhunting firm. Caan joined the fifth series of BBC2’s Dragons’ Den in 2007.

James Caan was in Lahore last week to lend his support to the £250 million UK aid education initiative in Pakistan. During his stay he visited UK Government programmes aimed at providing better quality education reaching all children in Pakistan, in partnership with the Pakistani Government.

Following are the excerpts of his interview with The News on Sunday.

The News on Sunday: What is the initiative in Pakistan that you are working on?

James Caan: UK’s prime minister made an announcement that he is going to invest 250 million pounds in education in Pakistan. This is our taxpayers’ money. It will be very useful for them to have an independent view on the viability of some of these projects. That’s how I am here — to understand the challenges and I have made 20 trips to Pakistan.

TNS: Where does Pakistan lack in your opinion?

JC: Pakistan lacks commitment from the government to address these issues on the ground. Leadership of other countries has given far more priority to education. India and Bangladesh have recognised the greatest asset of their country is an achievement capital. Pakistan has not woken up to this fact. This is why Pakistan will lag behind economically.

There are many jobs here but there isn’t an educated force available at middle level. The biggest challenge is that they can’t find enough good people. Yet Pakistan has the largest under-25 population. Pakistan has some of the brightest people and they are not developing them.

Pakistanis are very driven. They are incredibly motivated and they have a passion and a drive to succeed. In addition, family values remain high. The children want to do good for their parents. There is more reason here for people to succeed than at other places I have seen.

TNS: What are the challenges for entrepreneurs in Pakistan?

JC: In other parts of the world there is a more established venture capital which means the entrepreneur has availability of capital. All bright ideas were created by entrepreneurs but what they had was a capital to create these ideas. Pakistan has no venture capital. It has no ability to attract capital. In my opinion, thousands of wasted entrepreneurs with amazing, fantastic ideas are unable to launch businesses if there is no venture capital.

TNS: You are chairman of the Big Issue Magazine. What’s that?

JC: The Big Issue is one of the most successful projects we have for homeless people. In Britain people should not beg on streets. As modern economies grow I don’t think its right for you having to beg. What The Big Issue does is that it gives people dignity back. We have a publication and if you are a homeless person you come to my office every day and buy a copy of the magazine which I will sell to you and then you can go and sell that on the street. I charge cost. I make no money. I sell at 75 pence, the person who buys sells for 1.50 pounds and they make between 50 and 60 pounds a day profit from selling the magazine. The money, which they make, is enough to buy food and shelter. Today there are thousands of people in England who are not homeless because of The Big Issue Magazine. It is the most respected, philanthropic projects in the UK. It’s highly respected by the government and the Queen. We have been publishing the magazine for 20 years.

The Big Issue Foundation and we are looking at Pakistan from the poverty perspective to see whether some of the lessons the people learnt from The Big Issue can be translated in Pakistan. I am going to meet this weekend a number of publishing houses to see whether we can collaborate a joint venture with a Pakistani publishing organisation with a view to launching The Big Issue in Pakistan.

TNS: What are you doing at James Caan Foundation?

JC: We support schools in Pakistan. We fund the entire 320 children, their fee, their uniform, mini buses to collect them and drop them. The Foundation bears the whole cost. In addition to that we are significant donors to the area of cancer research. There are children who are abused and the Foundation supports that. There are eight different activities that the Foundation covers. We either invest directly like in Pakistan. At other places we tend to work through other established organisations.

TNS: There are children who work in workshops and markets. Do you have any plans for them?

JC: Punjab Education Foundation which supports 1300 schools in Lahore gives education for free and also gives milk, snacks, food to children. There are 600,000 children they are educating and it pays for them. There are such projects that are not well-publicised. The reason why the UK government asked me to come here was that they wanted somebody to do a proper review of what is available in the local community and see which projects work and which don’t. I am here representing the UK government.

We are addressing the issue of taking kids off the streets. There are six million children who do not go to school. That is the biggest waste of human talent. To me the responsibility of good government is to ensure that you develop your manpower. If the vast majority of your human capital sits around idle, how will you create an economy, how will you create an industrialised nation? You can’t.

TNS: You are one of the two people selecting the best works in science and technology. How do you view science education in Pakistan?

JC: We are not attracting enough graduates into science in England because they want to be bankers, they want to be in marketing because there is a glamorous perception. The concept of science doesn’t have glamour so what I did was to launch a huge campaign in England to publicise science. Look at Nokia – it has become one of the largest companies because it attracts people who have very good scientific brains and we are trying to give examples that it’s not just man in the white coat, there is marketing technology, online website and actually it’s a young and striving industry that is massive.

The question is how do you market industry to young people? You have to celebrate success. You have to tell people how technology industries have become some of the great successes in the world. So that people can see where the opportunity is.

TNS: A lot of children drop out from school before completing their school certificate. Do you think we need to promote technical education here?

JC: No. There are very basic issues, which if addressed can make a huge difference, like the teacher doesn’t turn up, only 20 per cent of the children have books. To me there are some very fundamental reasons why children drop out. A lot of schools don’t have boundary walls.

It is the responsibility of the government and it has to treat it as priority. Other countries have put education on the top. As a result these countries have seen their economies thrive because people are productive. They are giving services. If you look at India, Gandhi, years and years ago, had a vision for India. He had that vision of educated workforce fifty years ago. That is what it takes – Vision. And they have population of 1.4 billion people and the will to educate it. We are not committed, not serious about the issue.

Look at the Pakistanis who live abroad. They are some of the smartest people you find in the world. What have they in common? They all are educated.

TNS: Where have you spotted talent in Pakistan?

JC: There are some amazingly talented people here in business and politics. One of the things I am very impressed with is that in government there are more women than I had expected. When you are living abroad, the perception is different. You don’t think there are so many women at high positions here. Women are in business here, they are in politics here and that’s a very good sign of modernising your economy. I think women are the biggest untapped talent in this country. We have just scratched the surface. We are not addressing the issue.

TNS: How well does Pakistani talent fit in an industrial society?

JC: Pakistan will not become an industrialised nation. If all you are is a low cost manufacturing economy, how will you compete with countries like Philippines and Vietnam. Even Bangladesh is very competitive.

The key question for me is, what is Pakistan’s Unique Selling Point (USP). I don’t see what that is. If you are not competitive, you will be left behind. Where do you see yourself if you don’t develop and educate your workforce. India produces quality workforce today.

TNS: On a slightly different note, tell us about the programme Dragon’s Den you do on BBC TV.

JC: It’s one of the most successful programmes on BBC. It is viewed in the US, in Australia, in Japan, in Eastern Europe. It can be viewed in India as well. Young entrepreneurs, people who have good ideas and want to launch new business approach BBC. If the BBC likes the idea I give the entrepreneur three minutes to present his idea in my programme. We can quiz them for 25 minutes. We give money in it. The money can be seen on the table. To raise so much money in 20 minutes is not possible. It’s quite an amazing show. I have given away one million pounds – my personal cash on television. A million pounds is a lot of money. Because of the show, I was asked to write a book, The Real Deal: My Story from Brick Lane to "Dragons’ Den", which has become a bestseller and has created a lot of millionaires now.

Despite the claims and efforts of our economic managers to bring macro-economic stability in Pakistan, the miseries of a common person don’t seem to end. Six "F" crises (Food, fiscal, fuel, frontiers, fragility of climate and functional democracy) are getting aggravated with every passing day.

The effectiveness of government’s response to 6F crises is dependent on how it prioritises among four levels of securities i.e., individual, national, regional, and global security. It goes without saying that huge influence of Khaki presidents and Khaki backed civilian governments has resulted in "national" security taking priority over all other security concerns. On top of this, the "establishment" has complete monopoly over what it defines as national security interests and also in deciding on who is posing threat to those security interests.

However, one needs to understand that neither the "six F crises," nor the four levels of security mentioned above are mutually exclusive; rather they are interconnected and cumulative. Their interconnectedness has made it extremely difficult to address the national security when other levels of security are being compromised.

Various groups find it extremely easy to create parallel states within the state, when the "national" state fails to take care of individual security and cannot provide basic services such as food, shelter, health, and education to everyone. Growing militrisation in Pakistan can be understood in this context. Generally "militants" are perceived to be Islamic hard-liners. However, many "militants" are those who are outraged by chronic hunger, endemic corruption, unfair courts, and the government’s inability to supply basic services.

Socio-political instability in Pakistan emerging from individual insecurity may affect regional as well as global security providing an excuse to external actors for interference — such as the drone attacks by US forces.

Food insecurity and militancy

Food security ranking of 131 districts in Pakistan, according to FIP 2009, indicates that 48.5 percent of the total population in 76 out of 131 districts of Pakistan is food insecure. The population in another 26 districts is on borderline and extremely vulnerable to any external shock.

The 10 most food insecure districts according to this report include Dera Bugti, Musa Khel, Upper Dir, North Waziristan, Muhmand, Dalbidin, South Waziristan, Orakzai, and Panjgur. Other worst food insecure districts, according to FIP2009 are Bajur, Laki Marwat, Lower Dir, Shangla and Malakand etc. The international community might not have heard of these districts in the context of food insecurity. However, many people would easily recall that these districts are perceived as the "axis of evil" within Pakistan. There is no empirical evidence to prove that food insecurity is the only cause of militancy in the above-mentioned districts. However it is an established fact that food insecurity leads to violence and conflict.

Recognising food insecurity as a major cause of militancy and violence, many analysts believe that in Pakistan, a mullah-marxist nexus is operating where religious forces are exploiting the (anti-elite) feelings of lower and lower middle class food insecure people, motivating their unemployed youth to commit suicide attacks against innocent people.

Compromised security at one level (individual security in our case) compromises security at each of the other levels (national, regional, and global). Food scarcity heightens the potential for conflict, which translates into a security threat. Individual cases of relative hunger, marginalisation, and poverty can turn into collective deprivation. This collective deprivation when gets an identity be creed, gender, class, or nationality, always leads to class conflict and ultimately to violence.

The Baloch national movement offers an example here. Dera Bugti is the worst food insecure district in Pakistan. Natural gas was discovered in Dera Bugti back in the 1950s, and since the 1960s has been supplied to the rest of Pakistan for domestic and industrial consumption. Only in 1984 was Questa, the Balochistan capital, supplied with natural gas. Chronic food insecurity in Balochistan and especially in its gas producing districts aggravated the sense of marginalisation and deprivation to an extent where many Baluchis started believing that Punjab and Sindh provinces were exploiting their resources. As a consequence, Balochistan has seen the rise of many anti-federation movements. A widely publicized reaction to the perceived hegemony of the federal government was the 2009 kidnapping in Quetta of John Solecki, the regional head of UNHCR, by a nationalist group the Balochistan Liberation Union Front.

Extraordinary behaviours

The point that one needs to understand is that a high prevalence of food insecurity leads to intensified "extraordinary behaviour" of individuals. These extraordinary behaviours may include anti-social activities, working as bonded labour, selling of kidneys, selling of children, and committing suicides. Half of the total population of Pakistan, where 22 percent of the elites own 85 percent of the farmland, while 78 percent of the population own only 15 percent of the land, is behaving extraordinarily. This situation results in large numbers of individuals who might do anything in sheer desperation and frustration.

For many desperate individuals, shrines and madrassas are the complete solution for the problems they face in their day-to-day lives. They go to shrines for spiritual healing when the public health system fails them and they can’t afford private healthcare. Most shrines, moreover, are assured places where one can get free meals that pilgrims and believers offer there. They send their children to cost-free boarding schools — madrassas — when the public education system cannot absorb them and again private education system is beyond their access. Madrassas also become handy where public schools simply do not exist. As a matter of fact, religious groups offer complete social safety nets that the government sector cannot, due either to fiscal constraints or to governance issues. Hence, people tend to have very strong belief in these institutions due not only to religious reasons but also to economic reasons.

While most of the madrassas in Pakistan are symbols of peace, tolerance, and harmony, there are quite a few which are being run by religious hardliners who believe in a particular version of Islam. On many occasions, they have challenged the writ of the state, declaring state institutions as un-Islamic. They can easily get support from the poor and marginalised sections of society who are often let down by Pakistan’s inadequate public service delivery system. Chronically food insecure people who are often illiterate and marred by poverty become an easy prey and can be brainwashed by their leaders who offer complete economic security to their dependents, assure them a confirmed place in heaven, and turn them into suicide attackers to eliminate the perceived nexus of imperialist forces led by United States.

According to the law enforcement agencies, a suicide bomber is paid up to US$12,000, an amount that would be sufficient for his dependents to live a decent life. These groups behaving extraordinarily create socio-political instability, jeopardise the country’s economic activities, and threaten all foreign direct investors, but also pose a challenge to regional and global security.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the United States provided around $11 billion to Pakistan in the shape of budgetary support, economic assistance from USAID, military assistance, and Coalition Support Funds from 2002 to 2008. This money, if spent judiciously and with a political will, could have alleviated millions from extreme poverty and chronic hunger, thereby saving Pakistan from growing militancy. Alas, it was not.

Paradigm change

So what needs to be done differently? First, the situation requires a change in paradigm where individual hunger is perceived as a national security threat. Such a paradigm shift would result in greater resources being channelled to improve food security. It would also result in reprioritization of public spending, so that social development would be given priority over national defence, and the benefits of such spending would accrue to individuals and not only to the state.

Second, perceiving hunger as a national, regional, and global security threat, UN agencies, bilateral donors, and international financial institutes should realign their strategy in Pakistan to turn the pain of hunger into opportunity for social transformation, better awareness about human rights, women’s empowerment, girls’ education, adult education, and exposure to a secular face of the world. The international community should start investing in developing the social and human capital of the chronically food insecure people of the FATA, NWFP, and Balochistan. This would not only directly aid those harmed because of ongoing military operation, but also go some way towards fostering a more stable environment.

It is about time that the government of Pakistan and its international partners step up activities that ensure distribution of food to those in need, increase food absorption capacities in conflict hit and conflict prone zones, and institutionalise an independent impact assessment system in place to assess what worked and what did not work vis-à-vis social sector development.

The writer is the executive director of SDPI. He is the lead author of the forthcoming Food Insecurity in Pakistan 2009 report. suleri@sdpi.org

"There is no document of civilisation that is not at the same time a document of barbarism." Walter Benjamin

Because of the compression of time and space under the influence of technology the contemporary age is known as "Global Village". This is the first time in the history of mankind that local, national, regional and international events influence one another in various ways. Gilgit-Baltistan is also not immune to globalisation. My main focus here would be to take stock of the tripartite challenges posed by globalisation, communication and modernity for the survival of indigenous languages of Gilgit-Baltistan. Examining the current situation of indigenous languages in the region vis-à-vis exogenous forces, which include, market forces and their repercussions on local vernaculars.

Till now the region of Gilgit-Baltistan remained incommunicado with the outside world. There are many disadvantages of remaining in isolation. But the situation of isolation was not without benefits. Owing to the inaccessibility of Gilgit-Baltistan, the locals had to rely on their own resources to cope with the challenges emanating from nature and management of the society. The traditional system of governance in the region is one of the examples of indigenously developed governance mechanisms. But the finest illustration of creativity of the closed society is the development of various languages within the boundaries of Gilgit-Baltistan. Balti, Brushaski, Shina, Khowar, Wakhi, Domaki and other languages are pieces of creativity on the cultural tapestry of Gilgit-Baltistan.

The isolated status of Gilgit-Baltistan started to wane with the advent of the British Empire. The British arrived here with governance structure and rational institutions, which were a product of modernity. These developments played instrumental role in opening of hitherto isolated societies to the forces of modernity and communication.

After the British, the region got connected with the southern parts of Pakistan a through jeep able road in 1950s. During the 1970s the region witnessed opening of the Karakoram Highway. It connected Gilgit-Baltistan China and facilitated easy flow of exogenous goods, people, lifestyle and trends into the region. Although, the KKH and modern means of communication benefited it was not without cost. One of the costs of modernisation is increasing threat to the survival of vernaculars.

Since the society, economy, lifestyle and governance of Gilgit-Baltistan have undergone drastic changes in last four decades, it is natural to have repercussions of these changes on language. Previously, the local languages were organically interfused with local power structure, culture and society.

The autochthonous languages have become marginalised in different spheres of life. With urbanisation of various places in Gilgit-Baltistan and migration of native people have made the vocabulary associated with hunting, agriculture, shamanism, local arts and crafts irrelevant. Hence, various life worlds connected with these areas disappeared.

Introduction of mass literacy and service sector through rationalization of society and economy proved conducive in bringing about change in the socio-economic lot of the society. Nevertheless, local languages are disconnected with the power structure that determines the contours of society, economy, and education sector, administrative and political structure. As a result, people have opted for Urdu and English languages, which open new opportunities and bring power and prestige. Native languages are not part of the medium of instruction in educational institutions and government offices. The disconnection between power and language has far reaching consequences. This factor will determine, to great extent, the fate of local languages in the future.

Other than exogenous factors, local socio-cultural ethos and pressures have contributed to the extinction of local languages. The case of Domaki language is a case in point. This is a language spoken by artisan class of Hunza. In the traditional social and tribal set up Domaki speakers were marginalized group and fall in the lowest stratum in social hierarchy of Gilgit. Hence, power structure and social ethos also treated them as anathema. In reality they were repository and creators of arts, indigenous engineering, crafts and music. In this sense they were guardians of indigenous knowledge.

Mass education has opened new vistas of progress and social mobility to subaltern groups like Doms — people who speak Domaki language and musicians. Ashamed of their heritage and knowledge they were forced to relinquish their centuries old heritage and professions and opt for modern occupations.

True empowerment is that which enables one to progress without losing one’s right to being linguistically and professional dissimilar or having different identity. These are the people who did not find a modus vivendi in either tradition or modern structures. The former kept their role and identity fixed by denying opportunities available to other members of the society, whereas the latter, in a Faustian bargain, has offered them opportunities by depriving them of their very identity. It encapsulates the failure of the society that failed to strike a balance between tradition and modernity.

The story of the moribund Domaki language is a snippet of the bigger picture regarding the vanishing voices in Gilgit-Baltistan. To counter existential threats to local language it is indispensable to engage critically with modernity and chalk out policies and strategies that enable local languages to survive. In this context we have to take into consideration the devastating impact of the modernity on local languages and raise questions about some of the assumptions implicit in the discourse of modernization.

To preserve local language in the times of rampant globalisation three important steps need to be taken. First is the study and preservation of language by the means of the science of linguistics. All the languages of Gilgit-Baltistan are oral. With the rise of printing press, written word has dominated spoken word and transformed oral cultures into written one. By learning and utilizing the modern science of languages we can equip native speakers with required knowledge and tools to survive in the age of language cannibalism. Oral culture is a product of memorization or learning by heart. Linguistic is a product of mind. To preserve local languages it is imperative to acquaint oneself with the science of language by engaging our minds.

Second, modern electronic media has provided us tremendous opportunities to save native languages. A salient feature of media is that it fuses word and image. Thus, it enables us to see things and hear words synchronically, which is not possible in print media. The cumulative result of this process is permeation of local languages into society and native speaker who ears are avoid their languages.

Third, there is a dire need to explore the society and literature by employing modern technique of humanities and social sciences through a proper research institution. Only by aligning efforts of language preservation on scientific lines and employing the tricks of the trade of modern cultural industry, we can be able to save local languages from falling them into the dustbin of history. The pronouncement of ‘The End of History’ by liberal ideologues is not just declaration of the demise of alternative ideologies or worlds, it is also a veiled pronouncement of the impending death of small cultures, local languages and life worlds under the pressures of monolithic globalization across the world.

The writer is associated with Strengthening Participatory Organisation (SPO), Islamabad. Email: azizalidad@hotmail.com

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