Laptop Scams in Punjab, Pakistan

The General Elections to the National and Provincial Legislatures are nearby. Obviously, all the political parties are interested to gain maximum mandate from the masses in Pakistan which one can call as “jostling for power”. Talking about Punjab, two parties have a notable agenda that differs from each other. This has created a political “parting of the ways”. Keeping biasness away from the context of this specific blog post let me elaborate the true facts regarding the distribution of laptops by the Punjab Government led by the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML – N) to the students of public sector universities. Thankfully, there has been transparency in the distribution of laptops to the students. But when it comes to digging the facts, one gets shocked! The first issue I want to discuss is the fund allocation for such an expensive project. It has been revealed on print and electronic media that our provincial primary education will suffer because a large percentage of funds were diverted from the primary education budget for buying and distributing laptops to students. I will not quote exact figures. You can research that yourself for the time being because figures can get controversial and I do not want to give a projection of myself as being aligned to any particular mindset or school of thought.

The second issue that needs to be highlighted is the specifications of the laptops. Initially, the laptops came with 4 GB of RAM and i3 Processors with the Operating System as Microsoft Windows 7. But when the students received the laptops, the laptops had 2 GB of RAM and Intel Pentium 2.2 GHz Processor with Linux Ubuntu as the Operating System. This shows that there has been a massive scale corruption. When I discuss this issue in a gathering among my friends having taste for politics, the N League supporters term it as a propaganda against them by Pakistan Tehrik – e – Insaf and Pakistan Peoples’ Party. Other N league supporters laugh out by saying: O yaar laptop to mil gaiy naa (O man, at least you guys got laptops). Somewhat similar sort of ignorance is seen among students who are content with what they have got. For them, getting a laptop is a big achievement regardless of how they got it and who were made to suffer for this cause. It has been a bad example somewhat similar to Capitalism in the country where the educationally deprived primary school students will suffer due to this laptop affair. In a developing country like Pakistan, economic growth is necessary. But life is not always about economics. Ethics also play an important role in society. Honesty and sincerity count satisfactorily better than money provided the ones at the verdicts’ end are men of God and naught of the Lairs of the Devil.

My point here is: THINGS MUST BE DONE THROUGH EQUALITY. Primary education is the specific educational window which is lagging behind in Pakistan. By this laptop scheme, primary educational system may succumb to further deterioration due to paucity of funds. The youth must wake up and come out of this luxury of laptops and ask for a better treat where laptops should be given but in a fairer way so that everyone gets the equal right to good education and the laptop product should be in the way they were imported.

THINK! I will be looking forward to your comments and suggestions! Thank you!