‘Pakistan has an impeccable record of philanthropy’

A study conducted by the Pakistan Centre for Philanthropy has disclosed that the human resource and charity given by Pakistanis for welfare activities amount to Rs240 billion.

This was disclosed on Monday by Zafar Ahmed Khan, director of the Pakistan Centre for Philanthropy, while speaking at a conference, titled “Pakistan at 70”.

Sponsored by the London School of Economics, South Asia Centre, and the Aman Foundation, the seminar was held at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), city campus.

He was speaking at the maiden session of the conference, titled “Philanthropy and Development”.

Of this amount, he said Rs117 billion had been spent in cash and Rs40 billion was in terms of time. 

Ninety-eight percent of our people, he said, were involved in some kind of giving. A major share of the giving, he said, went to individuals, with organisations following next.

Among the organisations, Khan said, mosques and religious seminaries were the biggest recipients of donations.

People, he said, were shy of giving other organisations because of the trust deficit. “They were hesitant because of lack of transparency and accountability.”

Rs6.9 billion went to corporate philanthropy, he said, adding that it was critical in the light of the very few social nets offered the masses.

“We would like to see more money going into organizations. We have some marvellous NGOs. These need to be recognised and their activities be showcased,” he said.

Samad Dawood of the Engro pointed out that investing in women promised massive social returns. He spoke of a women’s development programme by his organization in the rural areas of Pakistan, saying that it had set in motion a chain effect whereby the whole society was progressing because of the women’s gainful employment. “We have to keep in mind the mind-boggling global changes,” he said.

The chairperson of the Aman Foundation, Faiza Naqvi stressed the need for motivating human capital development and seeing to it that they were passionate about their endeavours. “We have to align private passions with public organisations,” she said.

Naqvi said that while 70 years may be a long period in the life of an individual, for a nation it was just infancy. She hoped that the youth would lead the way to steer the country to positive change.

“We are a country with vast resources and immense potential. We are resilient. We have not capitulated to radicalization”.

However, she said, poverty, rapid lop-sided urbanisation, the yawning rich-poor gap, the springing up of slums and shanty towns had been massive problems to contend with.

Aman Foundation CEO Malik Ahmed Jalal stressed on the creation of wealth to spur philanthropy. Distinguishing between charity and philanthropy, he said that while charity was largely transactional in nature and donor-dependent, institutionalised philanthropy was more long term, capacity building, and meant to outlast an individual.

Later, in the post-lunch session, art and modernity were discussed. Iftikhar Dadi from the Cornell University, New York, talked about art and modernity in Pakistan and traced the history of artistic expression in the country as a means of human expression.

Pointing out the Marxist influence on artistic expression in the 1950s, he said this was the era when ethics were intertwined with politics. “The 1980s, marked by urbanisation, and opposition to the oppressive Zia regime, saw women activists in the field of art.”

From the 1990s, he said there were tense fault lines as culture had never been peripheral to society.

He cited Sadequain and his mural “Qalandar rules society” which was based on Iqbal’s poetry.

Ali Nobil said that cinema in Pakistan was not art in the conventional sense. “In Pakistan, we have a negative stance towards it [cinema].”

Columnist Fasi Zaka said that Pakistan was a real fertile ground for satirical art. He cited the leader of a political party as saying that there was going to be total destruction of Pakistan at the behest of the US. “Later it transpired that he was quoting an Urdu daily which had written it not as news but as satire.”

Artist Fareeda Batool said that violence had engulfed our society and that the Punjab government was dead set against our cultural and historical heritage.