Papa’s motorbike

If you stand by a busy road in Lahore for half an hour, you can easily take more than a dozen pictures like this. It is the image of a traditionally dressed, religious-looking father transporting his rather modern-looking daughters on a motorcycle. However, one such picture created quite an outrage in Pakistan last week because one of the two women riding the pillion was no common girl, but a member of Pakistan’s national women’s cricket team who had just landed at the Lahore airport and was riding back to her house on the back of a motorcycle.

It was reported that the team had not receive any protocol and no transport was arranged for them by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB). This simple image, in my opinion, reveals a lot more than our hysterical media hosts and Twitter brigade have chosen to discuss. The whole episode also raises serious questions about the process of agenda setting in media.

Two days later, on July 20, the PCB issued a clarification stating: “...as per the usual practice, all logistical arrangements were made for the national women’s team on their arrival from England….There was a bus ready to take the players to the National Cricket Academy (NCA) and from there to their homes if needed. Officials from the Women’s Wing were present to facilitate the players and management; some of the players though opted to return home through their own transport with their families after seeking due permission from the team manager.”

Let’s supposed this clarification was never issued. Did this picture warrant such reaction in that case? I do not understand why PCB officials must special-needs persons. I do not think such a duty can be a part of their ToRs. Our airports have excellent car-hailing and rental car services that are not only comfortable but also safe and economical. In this case, the expenses can be easily claimed from the PCB.

When my 70-year-old mother comes to visit me in Islamabad, I do not go to the airport to receive her. She can reach my house in 30 minutes after landing, while it would cost me many hours to receive her at the airport. I can better spend that time with her rather than commuting and waiting outside the lounge. I believe the time of government officials is more precious than mine and young players are in a better position to take care of themselves.

There is a clear element of middle-class snobbery in the reaction; it must have felt like your driver not reaching the school to pick your child. Such excessive care is suitable for children, not adults. In case of grown-up women, this attitude amounts to infantilising them which is a form of social control and goes against their empowerment. If these women can commute between their homes and playgrounds daily, they can certainly commute from the airport to their homes as well. The PCB might be at fault on a hundred other counts, but they have taken good care of women cricketers.

For those who think that a car is the only natural form of transport, according to the World Bank, only 18 in 1000 person own a car in Pakistan. This figure puts Pakistan at 161 on the list of 193 countries. Motorcycles, on the other hand, are by far the most popular personal vehicles. During the last fiscal year, two million motorcycles were produced in Pakistan compared to 200,000 cars ie ten motorcycles were manufactured for every car assembled in Pakistan.

According to Arif Hasan, a renowned urban planner, motorcycles are a cheaper means of travel than public transport, they provide flexibility, and they save time in commuting. “However, there are problems for the lower income groups to purchase them and another important factor is that women, who constitute about 25 percent of public transport commuters (in Karachi) at present, do not use them for cultural reasons. The number of women commuting is increasing rapidly,” wrote Hasan in a research paper.

Yet much of our urban infrastructure is built to facilitate car owners, neglecting cyclists and pedestrians. Though Rapid Bus Transit has been built to cover some routes in Lahore and Rawalpindi, most routes in these cities and all other cities in the country await a decent and efficient system of public transport.

This picture is empowering in many ways. It shows that a low income family is grooming its daughters to become world class players. To be a national athlete, you need single-minded focus and that means a lot of support from family members. Such support is by no means unique in today’s Pakistan. In fact, there is a huge unmet need for educating and empowering girls that the state is failing to fulfil.

A decade back, I visited a high school in the mountains of Balochistan, some 40 kilometres from Khuzdar, as a consultant with Unicef. Throughout the meeting, parents tried to use my influence to convince the head master to let their girls study at the school, which was meant only for boys. “They are our sons and daughters. If we have no objection to co-education, who is the head master to stop our girls studying with their brothers?”, said one of the villagers. During research work in Punjab, I met a number of poor fathers who had decided to educate a daughter instead of a son due to their limited resources.

This picture shows a religiously inclined father grooming his daughters for a most public profession, vociferously opposed by religious leaders. It looks like a success story of a dialogue between tradition and modernity and smooth management of the generation gap. If the young girl is a role model for millions of girls, this old father should also be a role model for millions of parents.

A religious Muslim male is one of the most maligned categories of humans in today’s globalised world. We should not be too keen to buy the stereotype of the misogynist Muslim in a beard. Misogynists come in all shapes and sizes and all religious men are not misogynists. When some of our top women journalists and human rights activists share their family photos, one gets a pleasant surprise to find their fathers supporting long grey beards. Yet these are the men who raised these tiger cubs as empowered women.

Finally, about media and its role in agenda setting. Attention is a limited resource. If you spend it on one thing, you take it away from something else. If you go after a frivolous thing, you are neglecting serious problems faced by society. This is the main lesson of agenda setting. According to the agenda-setting theory, the media concentrates on a few issues and subjects. In turn, this focus leads the public to perceive those issues as more important than other problems. In short, by filtering reality, the media shapes reality.

Women’s rights is a serious issue that needs our constant attention. However, it is an issue that mustn’t be trivialised. By tilting at windmills, we do not serve the cause of gender. We can do it by focusing on substantial and genuine problems, and by putting them in the right context. And finally, it is good to have a car, but there are girls who can reach the sky on papa’s motorbike.

The writer is an anthropologist and development professional.

Email: zaighamkhan@yahoo.com

Twitter: @zaighamkhan