<b>Why this IT university is a bad idea : Masood Hasan</b>
We have all been on a tour of 8 Club Road, Lahore, humble office of the former chief minister Punjab and now venue for the impromptu press conference of Mr Khosa where he gave stunning details of the opulence and royal style of lounging that went into this surely misnamed "Secretariat." Hugh Hefner's mansion, replete with bunnies popping out of the woodwork, would rate a very poor second. The plush drawing rooms, the sweeping boardrooms dripping with fancy imported fittings, manicured gardens, air-conditioned atriums, a staff of over 800 grovelling slaves, bullet- proof stables of luxury limousines, the insides of which you and I have not even seen, leave alone owned, security cameras, bullet proof -- or should it be shame-proof -- glass windows all around, air-conditioning strung up like buntings and every conceivable luxury most of us can't even begin to dream about -- all that we all know this being the age of meddlesome, intrusive television. If they ever wish to understand what squandering of the public money of an impoverished country means, 8 Club Road has all the depressing answers written on every square inch of its imported Spanish tiles and swathes of foreign-made marble that the Pope would be happy to pray on. No, all that we know and it does not make us any the wiser for it.
The Chief Minister's Secretariat is a monument dedicated to vanity and a mindset that comes into play when those undeserving in every possible manner are catapulted into positions they do not deserve. But this national embarrassment -- the President's and Prime Minister's Houses will surely be no different, as would the grand Governors' Houses -- cannot be morphed into a national mistake.
The spirit that prompted Mian Shahbaz Sharif to announce that this palace would be converted into an IT university is understandable, but it is not logical or rational and does no justice to Mian Sahib's otherwise clear-headed policies of getting the priorities sorted out and then ensuring the job is done right the first time, each time. It would be a colossal mistake to now "convert" this decadent eyesore, bang smack in the middle of GOR, into an IT university where busloads of students would descend trailed by the obsequious canteens, cycle-scooter stand wallahs, the chips-, ice candy- and cola-sellers in hot pursuit. Consider some of the following.
The swift decline of Lahore's civic life into chaos is largely due to unending and ever swifter violations of its zoning laws. Zoning laws are history. The line between what is a residence and what is a business no longer exists. Workshops rise like warts next to homes where generations lived in some tranquillity. Tree-lined avenues and footpaths have long been overrun by concrete horrors, and the felling of thousands of trees in the bargain. Shops sprout everywhere. Gutters overflow, garbage piles build up into mountains that would daunt the late Sir Edmund Hillary and standards of living, already eroded, decline further. The absence of zoning laws and a somnolent administration has led to wide-scale uprooting of all values right across Pakistan. There was the Timber Mafia, now there is the Developers' Mafia. Karachi even has a Tanker Mafia. This urban wasteland is what we are leaving as our legacy for generations yet to be born and if we refuse to care what we do today, we should not be surprised if obliteration is our ultimate destiny. Better nations than ours have fallen by the wayside. Why wouldn't we?
The tract of land between Lahore's Charing Cross -- I refuse to call it anything else -- and the Canal represents this city's most treasured heaven. The Mall -- I refuse to call it anything else -- with its great trees standing guard, is regarded as one of the world's most beautiful boulevards and the areas adjoining it need to be jealously preserved. We have done exactly the opposite, but that does not mean we go on mindlessly mauling and murdering whatever remains. You can raze the entire GOR down and divide it into five- marla plots and plant the most hideous eyesores on it -- that may make a lot of economic sense but you simply don't do everything because it makes economic sense. Lahore is suffering -- and in this it is in the same sorry bracket as the other cities, from choked roads, indiscriminate commercial activity, schools mushrooming in every corner and thousands of commuters trapped at least twice daily by traffic snarls that refuse to get cleared. For an oil-starved nation, I wonder if anyone has ever worked out how much fuel we burn daily on our streets simply idling. Must do wonders for the environment.
Mian Sahib's IT university will be another rusting nail into a termite-eaten coffin of this city's dwindling civic life. The three-storey palace houses the offices of the chief minister --â by the way, he has five : 7 and 8 Club Road, 90 The Mall (Freemason's Hall) and two offices at the Civil Secretariat and the Punjab Assembly. Why one man should need five offices, unless he had mastered the technique of time travel, is hard to understand, but that's the way our public servants serve us. It has offices for his staff, the chief secretary's office, a conference hall, a banquet hall, staff rooms, the great atrium and hissing lifts (bullet-proof?), though it is only two floors up. To accommodate 2,000-3,000 students here would mean a major redesigning and rebuilding exercise. An IT facility has an altogether different set of parameters of space and needs. Already, Rs900 million were spent on 8 Club Road's construction and another 25 million on the do-dads. There is no sense in spending more money to "convert" this whatever-you-want-to-call-it into an IT university.
It would be far better to make this into a public library. The Punjab Public Library is in a shambles, falling apart with no hope of getting revived. Best to hand that over to the Lahore Museum which is woefully short of space and give Lahore a grand library. One less plaza would lift the spirits. Let it be a library of great quality, a source of all knowledge. Call it the People's Library or Lahore Library. Call it anything, it does not matter. But other than that, there is little you can do with this monumental folly. It can hold seminars and conferences and be a showpiece for visitors.
An IT university is an emotional reaction, not a well-considered decision. Get together Lahore's remaining intellectuals and public figures and ask them -- or simply do it yourself because that would be the right thing to do. Educational institutions must be located outside the city, not right in its heart. "Democracy is the best form of revenge," we all heard. "Sensible use of public assets is the best service to the people," should be the guiding principle here. If a library does not mean much to the new leadership, then examine the idea of making this into a high-class hotel, though the Governor's House eminently qualifies to be that. Incidentally, Islamabad the Beautiful as Mickey puts it, has no public library, but it has a four-province "flower" atop a hill -- envisioned by the President, no less. This uninspiring piece of work, created by some unknown architect out of Saudi Arabia, is another national folly. This useless blot put us back by 700 million rupees, or thereabouts. But a library? Banish the thought. It doesn't have flair, and what good do books do anyway?
Mian Shahbaz Sharif has arrived to start where he left off. Let him announce a change of plan on 8 Club Road. It's not late at all and it will endear him to a public that is starved of news that means something good for them.
<i>The writer is a Lahore-based columnist. Email: masoodhasan0@gmail.com</i>
<b>My Comments :</b> Massood Hassan is unaware that in Pakistan <b>I T</b> stands for <b>Islamic Terrorism!</b>
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