‘Number of Pakistani social scientists booming’

Karachi
Until 15 years ago, most of the research pertaining to Pakistan was done abroad, but today we have a boom and there is a large number of Pakistani social scientists involved in social sciences research, said noted academic Dr Akber Zaidi.
He was speaking at the Alliance Francaise on Thursday on the subject, “Still dismal one decade later? social science in Pakistan since 2002”.
Dr Zaidi attributed a number of reasons to this boom which could be summarised as (1) the formation of the Higher Education Commission which has sent in-service academics to foreign universities for further education, who, on their return were doing a commendable job, (2) Growth of private universities with a shift in the emphasis from computer technology to social sciences, (3) second generation Pakistanis returning from overseas, (4) many senior academics returning and new social science research institutes are being set up, particularly in Lahore, (5) the Lahore University of Management Sciences (Lums) has been really instrumental in this boom, bringing back a lot of Pakistanis, (6) Fullbright scholarships have been instrumental in enabling students of not-too-affluent means to pursue higher education in the US who on return are doing a commendable job, and (8) the world has opened up career-wise. In the 80s and the 90s social scientists were dedicated to working for donors and NGOs, which, he opined, was consultancy, not academic research.
However, he regretted that today information technology tools like Facebook and Twitter had become the main sources of academic discourse.
With the onslaught of Twitter and Facebook, he added, the quality of debate had degraded.
Besides, he said in the 1990s, there was far greater freedom of thought and expression
He said that consultancy was good for making pots of money but it inhibited social sciences research. One of the reasons for this, he said, was that donors did not like intellect. Besides, he addded, we had been clamouring for changing the taxation structure and bringing more people into the tax net but to no avail.
Tax, he said, would always be a problem if not given a political context. Though not in favour of donors, he said one positive fallback of the donor-driven agenda had been the focus on gender. This, he said, had resulted in women coming into the forefront alongside men and society had been able to make use of their creativity. Dr Zaidi said that he foresaw an increase in social researchers in the country 30 years from now. He highlighted the increase in the number of women researchers.
However, during an question and answer session, his assertion about the utility of private universities was contested by a questioner who said that private universities which were coming up “ten-a-penny” did not have the wherewithal for sound academic training as they did not have the means to get requisite academic staff and some of these were being run in private bungalows and that some of the owners of these universities themselves were just matriculates, he agreed in principle but said a difference to some extent was being made in the situation.