Zulfikar Ali Bhutto: The Psychodynamics of his Rise and Fall by Shamim Ahmad

Of all the leaders who came to rule Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto has been only second to the Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah in terms of receiving attention from authors of different types—biographers, journalists, researchers, and professional historians. While many prime ministers of the country have remained in oblivion even though some of them deserved to be studied seriously given their contribution to the country’s political development, Bhutto was regularly made the subject of studies both within the country and abroad. A number of Ph.D theses have been done on him and his rule. The number of books written by various authors expressing different shades of opinion are simply uncountable. Being the founder of the nation, Jinnah was treated by and large, over an extended period of the country’s history, and by a majority of writers, as a national hero whose role in history was highlighted in the manner in which the nationalist historians write about the national heroes. It was much later that Pakistani historians took to writing more professionally about the Father of the Nation. Quite interestingly, the Jinnah that emerged from these objective histories proved to be a more original and powerful historical figure as compared with his previous representation as a straightjacketed national hero. As compared to him, Bhutto became the subject of objective historical works right from the beginning. Of course, there have been books of hagiography written in his honor, but these are mainly from the pen of people belonging to his own political party or the ones who were overly inspired by his charisma. Then there are numerous books written by his diehard opponents, who leave no stone unturned in demolishing his image. Despite the diverse writings about him, ranging from one extreme to another, it is good, from the point of view of historical political writings on Pakistan, that with the

Biodiversity of Staphylinids of Punjab, Pakistan

Rove beetles belong to the largest family (Staphylinidae) of beetles in the order Coleoptera of the Class Insecta. Because of their cosmopolitan distribution with broad latitudinal ranges, they are known to play important role as pollinators, decomposers and scavengers. The studies on their biodiversity including the species richness, distribution pattern and seasonal abundance were unknown with respect to their role in ecological system in Punjab, Pakistan. The present study is therefore, being carried out to study the biodiversity of Staphylinidae in different ecological regions of Punjab. For this purpose, collection was made from cropped area (8 localities) and forest area (3 localities) of the Punjab, Pakistan with 5 different collecting methods; pitfall trapping, flight intercept trapping, light trapping, Berlese funnel trapping and sweep netting during 2008 and 2009. Population was collected for four days after every two months from each locality during the entire collection period. Relative humidity (%), temperature (C O ) and soil moisture contents (%) were also recorded for all the localities. In the cropped areas, 1083 specimens belonging to 5 subfamilies, 15 genera and 26 species were collected and identified. Paederus fuscipes Curt. was the species with the highest population (32%) overall while Tachyporus himalyicus Bernh. was with lowest population (0.4%). It was found that some species preferred some crops, e.g., Paederus fuscipes was found only in cropped areas preferably in maize and berseem crops and Oxytellus Gr. genus was found mostly in plant and leaf debris. Astilbus mixtus Cam. was found associated with termites in the sandy areas only. High Shannon weaver index value (2.572) was found from Rahim Yar Khan and lowest value (1.82) was found from Rawalpindi during 2008. In the forest areas, mostly species were collected from Changa Manga (46.67%) during 2008 and from Muridwala (38.33%) during 2009. Some species were found missing in the forest areas like Paederus fuscipes, Astilbus mixtus etc. Association between collecting methods and localities was also determined. This association was found positive only for locality 1 (Lahore). No association was found between years and localities. Most Staphylinidae were collected through pit fall traps and least was found with FIT’S. Most Staphylinidae were collected during July-August. There was also a positive correlation between relative humidity, soil moisture contents and rove beetles. Dry soils had less rove beetles as compared to the moist soils. If the soil moisture contents will be more, there will be no space for air between the soil particles then the rove beetles will be less because of mortality due to suffocation. On the basis of coefficients of association calculated from different biotic (crops and other insects) and abiotic factors (temperature, relative humidity, soil moisture contents) that were faced by the collected species, the specimens belonging to different Staphylinidae species have been arranged into five groups with five species treated as separate on the basis of their habitat, locality, abundance and their status.