Loud Thinking

Archive for 2013

No Law (except in Islamabad Capital Territory & Sindh) in Punjab, KPK, Balochistan, GB & AJK, for poor students free education, in private schools.

Late last year Pakistan’s National Assembly passed a law for compulsory free education of 10% poor children in the near vicinity of private schools of Islamabad.

This year in February 13, the Sindh Provincial Assembly also passed the same law for compulsory free education of 30% poor children in the near vicinity of private schools in the entire Sindh Province. I had specifically requested for this 30% figure to President Asif Ali Zardari and it was very kind of him that he accepted my proposal.

It is very strange that no such law has been passed by the Provincial Assemblies of Punjab, KPK, Balochistan, GB and AJK governments.

Here, it must be noted that millions of school going age children are not able to join the schools in Pakistan, due to various reasons; and if these millions are ignored today, our future is guaranteed to be ruined tomorrow.

Already, Pakistan is the lowest ranked country in the field of education in the SAARC region.

No Law (except in Islamabad CT & Sindh) in Punjab, KPK, Balochistan, GB & AJK, for poor students free education, in private schools.

Late last year Pakistan’s National Assembly passed a law for compulsory free education of 10% poor children in the near vicinity of private schools of Islamabad.

This year in February 13, the Sindh Provincial Assembly also passed the same law for compulsory free education of 30% poor children in the near vicinity of private schools in the entire Sindh Province.

It is very strange that no such law has been passed by the Provincial Assemblies of Punjab, KPK, Balochistan, GB and AJK governments.

Here, it must be noted that millions of school going age children are not able to join the schools in Pakistan, due to various reasons; and if these millions are ignored today, our future is guaranteed to be ruined tomorrow.

66 terror groups active in India: Govt

A TOI Report Published Today.

NEW DELHI: There are as many as 66 terrorist/separatist groups active across the country, including 34 in Manipur alone, the government informed the LokSabha on Tuesday. Most outfits active in Jammu & Kashmir and the hinterland are patronized by Pakistan-based parent outfits which extend them shelter, training, weapons and funding.

Minister of state for home RPN Singh stated in written reply to a question that at least five terrorist outfits – LeT, Indian Mujahideen, Hizbul Mujahideen, Harkat ul Jihadi Islami and Al Badr — have presence across the hinterland, particularly in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh. The government also said there were reports of anti-national and separatist activities from states like Tamil Nadu and Assam.

While five of the 66 terrorist/separatist groups listed by the MHA are operating in Jammu & Kashmir, with Lashker e Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen topping the list, 10 are active in Assam, four each in Meghalaya and Nagaland, two each in Tripura and Mizoram, and three in Punjab. Incidentally, the list shared with the Lok Sabha does not include Left-wing extremist outfits like the CPI(Maoist), banned under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. Though the list put the number of Manipuri insurgent outfits at 34, MHA officials later clarified that at least three of them have already surrendered.

According to Singh, the broad activities of these organizations included terrorism, secession, smuggling/production/circulation of fake Indian currency, terror financing, etc. The government has strengthened its intelligence apparatus, he said, with MAC operational on a 24×7 basis and real-time coordination between the Centre and states on security matters. The minister added that terror funding was being tracked and countered. While NIA has created a terror funding and fake currency cell, banking companies and financial institutions are required under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, to submit suspicious transaction reports (STRs), The Financial Intelligence Unit regularly alerts the law enforcement and intelligence agencies on these STRs.

“Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.”

— Ann Landers

Justice is the quality of being fair; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness..

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

Nelson Mandela (born 1918);
Former president of South Africa

Show Your Strength as a Leader

Competence can be established by virtue of the position you hold, your reputation, and your actual performance. But your presence matters too. If you want people to see you as a strong leader, do the following three things:
Feel in command. If you see yourself as an impostor, others will, too. Instead, believe in your abilities and you’ll project confidence, enthusiasm, and passion.
Stand up straight. Good posture does not mean the exaggerated chest-out pose known in the military as “standing at attention,” or raising one’s chin up high. It just means reaching your full height, using your muscles to straighten the S-curve in your spine.
Get ahold of yourself. Twitching and fidgeting sends the signal that you’re not in control. Stillness demonstrates calm.

Adapted by HBR from “Connect, Then Lead,” by Amy J.C. Cuddy, Matthew Kohut, and John Neffinger.

What is happening in Pakistan..!

Prisoner’s barracks are auctioned for the prison wardens..!

A letter published today by the daily “The Nation” titled “Eating at our own roots”

Hearing information about jail auctions surprised me. On a local TV talk show the host informed that in jails the prisoner’s barracks are auctioned and prison wardens take part in this auction, the price for a barrack may go into hundreds of thousands. One may ask what happens after this auction, is it for the safety and welfare of the prisoners? No, the prisoners are sold to the highest bidder and the prisoners in that barrack are put completely at the mercy of the winning warden; they can eat or sleep or even breathe only by his permission. If a prisoner cannot pay, his life is made one perpetual hell. If he pays well he can have luxuries; such as cell phone, drugs and even arms. So where does security come into all this and who is responsible for security while all the prison staff is collecting money and coming up with plans on how to line their pockets.
In this scenario the two jail breaks are easy to accept, when the fiber of a society is riddled with corruption such acts become common. The rot started immediately after partition, when loot and lust for evacuee property started, but mercifully many departments remained clean of graft. The rot was boosted by Z A Bhutto when he ‘nationalized’ all industry and put his inept cronies in charge who destroyed them. The disintegration has since then been gathering speed and everyone in a department happily eating away at the roots of our country, so who will catch the thieves?

DR ZAHEER ASGAHR KHAN,
Lahore, August 12.

What is happening in Pakistan..!

Raiding Illegal International Incoming Traffic After Increasing it

By Aamir Attaa | 26, Aug 2013 | Pro Pakistani

I am sure you have watched one of those movies in which Hero himself gets his girl attacked by some gangsters and then he pops up out of no-where to save the girl to become her hero.

This is exactly what has happed in the case of international illegal traffic in Pakistan. The stake holders, i.e. Ministry of IT and Telecom, PTA and LDI operators first paved the way for illegal traffickers and now they are raiding the exchanges to make headlines.

Yes, I am hinting the notorious International Clearing Hours or ICH, authorized by Ministry of IT and Telecom and executed by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority. This ICH hiked the tariffs for international incoming calls by 300% to 800% since October 1st, 2012.

This irrational increase in tariffs for international incoming calls forced the Pakistanis abroad to use illegal means to make calls to their FnF on discounted rates. And hence the business for illegal international incoming traffic grew by many folds.

Interestingly, CCP had communicated its fears for possible increase in illegal traffic through its policy directive to MoIT. But apparently no one listened them then.

Same had happened in April 2008 when PTA had increased ASR (a part of international incoming call charges) and subsequently the international incoming call prices grew. So did the illegal voice traffic. There are evidences that this increase in ASR was without authority approval and decision was to benefit a single person.

Now here comes the million dollar question: Who is responsible for increase in illegal traffic?

MoIT and PTA? Who are now winning laurels for making efforts to stop the illegal exchanges?
LDI Operators? Who are now complaining against the increase in illegal traffic?
All three of these?
Even worse, government is going to spend million of taxpayers’ dollars to setup system to block illegal traffic. Hence, there becomes another vendor that will get benefited from ICH saga.

So many beneficiaries through a single approval of ICH from Ministry of IT and Telecom, on expense of pockets of common man.

I am wondering what is stopping the authorities to question the person who approved ICH or lobbied for ICH. And why he (or they) is/are not put on trial. Yes, you get it right: That’s only if authorities are involved.

Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?
by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic | 9:00 AM August 22, 2013
Comments (226)

There are three popular explanations for the clear under-representation of women in management, namely: (1) they are not capable; (2) they are not interested; (3) they are both interested and capable but unable to break the glass-ceiling: an invisible career barrier, based on prejudiced stereotypes, that prevents women from accessing the ranks of power. Conservatives and chauvinists tend to endorse the first; liberals and feminists prefer the third; and those somewhere in the middle are usually drawn to the second. But what if they all missed the big picture?

In my view, the main reason for the uneven management sex ratio is our inability to discern between confidence and competence. That is, because we (people in general) commonly misinterpret displays of confidence as a sign of competence, we are fooled into believing that men are better leaders than women. In other words, when it comes to leadership, the only advantage that men have over women (e.g., from Argentina to Norway and the USA to Japan) is the fact that manifestations of hubris — often masked as charisma or charm — are commonly mistaken for leadership potential, and that these occur much more frequently in men than in women.

This is consistent with the finding that leaderless groups have a natural tendency to elect self-centered, overconfident and narcissistic individuals as leaders, and that these personality characteristics are not equally common in men and women. In line, Freud argued that the psychological process of leadership occurs because a group of people — the followers — have replaced their own narcissistic tendencies with those of the leader, such that their love for the leader is a disguised form of self-love, or a substitute for their inability to love themselves. “Another person’s narcissism”, he said, “has a great attraction for those who have renounced part of their own… as if we envied them for maintaining a blissful state of mind.”

The truth of the matter is that pretty much anywhere in the world men tend to think that they that are much smarter than women. Yet arrogance and overconfidence are inversely related to leadership talent — the ability to build and maintain high-performing teams, and to inspire followers to set aside their selfish agendas in order to work for the common interest of the group. Indeed, whether in sports, politics or business, the best leaders are usually humble — and whether through nature or nurture, humility is a much more common feature in women than men. For example, women outperform men on emotional intelligence, which is a strong driver of modest behaviors. Furthermore, a quantitative review of gender differences in personality involving more than 23,000 participants in 26 cultures indicated that women are more sensitive, considerate, and humble than men, which is arguably one of the least counter-intuitive findings in the social sciences. An even clearer picture emerges when one examines the dark side of personality: for instance, our normative data, which includes thousands of managers from across all industry sectors and 40 countries, shows that men are consistently more arrogant, manipulative and risk-prone than women.

The paradoxical implication is that the same psychological characteristics that enable male managers to rise to the top of the corporate or political ladder are actually responsible for their downfall. In other words, what it takes to get the job is not just different from, but also the reverse of, what it takes to do the job well. As a result, too many incompetent people are promoted to management jobs, and promoted over more competent people.

Unsurprisingly, the mythical image of a “leader” embodies many of the characteristics commonly found in personality disorders, such as narcissism (Steve Jobs or Vladimir Putin), psychopathy (fill in the name of your favorite despot here), histrionic (Richard Branson or Steve Ballmer) or Machiavellian (nearly any federal-level politician) personalities. The sad thing is not that these mythical figures are unrepresentative of the average manager, but that the average manager will fail precisely for having these characteristics.

In fact, most leaders — whether in politics or business — fail. That has always been the case: the majority of nations, companies, societies and organizations are poorly managed, as indicated by their longevity, revenues, and approval ratings, or by the effects they have on their citizens, employees, subordinates or members. Good leadership has always been the exception, not the norm.

So it struck me as a little odd that so much of the recent debate over getting women to “lean in” has focused on getting them to adopt more of these dysfunctional leadership traits. Yes, these are the people we often choose as our leaders — but should they be?

Most of the character traits that are truly advantageous for effective leadership are predominantly found in those who fail to impress others about their talent for management. This is especially true for women. There is now compelling scientific evidence for the notion that women are more likely to adopt more effective leadership strategies than do men. Most notably, in a comprehensive review of studies, Alice Eagly and colleagues showed that female managers are more likely to elicit respect and pride from their followers, communicate their vision effectively, empower and mentor subordinates, and approach problem-solving in a more flexible and creative way (all characteristics of “transformational leadership”), as well as fairly reward direct reports. In contrast, male managers are statistically less likely to bond or connect with their subordinates, and they are relatively more inept at rewarding them for their actual performance. Although these findings may reflect a sampling bias that requires women to be more qualified and competent than men in order to be chosen as leaders, there is no way of really knowing until this bias is eliminated.

In sum, there is no denying that women’s path to leadership positions is paved with many barriers including a very thick glass ceiling. But a much bigger problem is the lack of career obstacles for incompetent men, and the fact that we tend to equate leadership with the very psychological features that make the average man a more inept leader than the average woman. The result is a pathological system that rewards men for their incompetence while punishing women for their competence, to everybody’s detriment.

HBR Blog Network