ڈینی سن راس
ہندوستان کے ایک مشہور ادیب وشاعر کے ساتھ یورپ کے ایک نامور مستشرق کابھی ماتم کرناہے۔ان کانام ڈینی سن راس تھا۔سرکاخطاب رکھتے تھے۔ عربی اورترکی ادبیات پراُن کی نظر وسیع تھی۔لندن کے مشہور اسکول آف اورینٹل اسڈیز کے ڈائریکٹر رہے اوراس سے پہلے مدرسہ عالیہ کلکتہ کے بھی پرنسپل رہ چکے تھے۔ اورپھر سب سے بڑی بات یہ ہے کہ اس علم وفضل کے باوصف مارگیولیوتھ ایسے متعصب مستشرقین کے برخلاف سرڈینی سن راس مسٹر آرنلڈ کی طرح اسلام اورمسلمانوں کے ساتھ ایک بڑی حد تک دوستانہ روش رکھتے تھے۔افسوس ہے گذشتہ ماہ اُن کے انتقال سے یورپ کے علمی حلقے السنۂ مشرقیہ کے ایک نامور فاضل سے محروم ہوگئے۔ [اکتوبر۱۹۴۰ء]
The paper sets out to briefly discuss mental health challenges faced by Pakistani young women, and brings out an innovative solution through a multidisciplinary approach, i.e, socio-culturally situated low-cost digital intervention. The paper begins with an overview of mental health issues. It then sheds light on the scope of open education and innovation in Pakistan. Finally, through a reflective narrative approach, I have explored my personal journey of becoming a networked practitioner, and how an open educational website emerged to intersect the needs of Pakistani young women. Data is gathered from 137 reflective diary entries and analyzed through narrative analysis approach. Digital literacy and open networking practices have shaped my digital identity and allowed me to embrace open scholarship. Networking and collaboration have helped me filtering Open Educational Resources (OERs). Further, collaborative activities encouraged participants to become the co-producers of resource development. Overall, an adaptation of low-cost technology has potentially helped participants to reflect and embrace their personal identities.
This thesis explores the relationship among democracy, poverty, and violence using spatial econometric technique; socio-economic and demographic determinants of party affiliation; and impact of socio-economic deprivations on voters’ preferences Pakistan. It comprises of five chapters which deal with political economy of terrorist attacks, party support, and election outcomes. The brief introduction of the thesis is given in chapter one and rest of the study proceeds as follows. Chapter 2 investigates the determinants of spatial variation in terrorist attacks in Pakistan for the years 2009 and 2011. Using the spatial lag and spatial error models, the chapter concludes that poverty within a district is negatively related to terrorism in the district. However, poverty in neighboring districts is associated with high number of attacks in that district. Votes’ turnout as proxy for general public’s contentment with regime is negatively correlated to terrorism incidents. The results also reveal that the clusters of attacks have also spread to other parts of the country between the years 2009 and 2011. It is found that terrorism also spreads through the diffusion of attacks to other districts and provinces. More importantly, the attacks are spatially correlated and hence the hot spots are identifiable. Hence, the terrorist attacks are not random across districts, although they may be random within a particular district. The 3rd chapter explores the basis on which voters affiliate themselves with political parties in Pakistan. The study is based on primary data consisting of a sample of 929 students enrolled in Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. It uses multinomial logistic regression model to find different socio-economic and demographic correlates of intended party support. The empirical results show that gender, region, perceived government performance, and media exposure play important roles in the formation of political preferences towards a specific political party. Moreover, different political parties enjoy certain advantages over the competing parties such as concentrated vote bank in specific regions on the basis of ethnicity and media coverage. Furthermore, the study also finds that PML(N) has certain advantages in media handling and projection of its performance because of its vast experience in previous governments. On the other hand, PTI has advantage in some demographic aspects and it is a preferred choice of educated, young, urban and female voters. The fourth chapter contributes to existing literature by empirically investigating the impact of environment, terrorist attacks, and socio-economic deprivations on changes in vote shares of the major contesting political parties between two consecutive elections in Pakistan. For estimations the study uses district level data and fixed effects technique on pooled data for the election years 2008 and 2013. Results of the study show that environmental degradation reflected in rise of temperature and terrorist attacks that represent deterioration of security of life and property have significant and adverse affected the voters’ preferences for the incumbent regimes. Similarly, economic deprivation, lack of educational opportunities, and health facilities have also played significant role in reducing the vote shares of the incumbent parties. The results of our all studies are mostly according to the theoretical expectations and also having important policy implications. The first essay highlights the significance of political discourse besides military cum administrative measures while combating the menus of terrorism in Pakistan. Whereas the second explores socio-economic and demographic determinants of party affiliation; and impact of socio-economic deprivations on voters’ preferences is studied in the third and last essay.