Issues of Ethnic Diversity and Just Development in Pakistan with a Special Focus on the Seraiki Ethnic Group

Ethnicity implies the sense of belonging together as the cultural group in a given society. It is a complex combination of racial, cultural and historical characteristics by which people differentiate themselves from other groups. This research envisages the genesis and the evolution of ethnicity as a political concept, the problems of ethnicity in a heterogeneous, multicultural state and the phenomenon of ethno-nationalism in its historical and analytical perspective in the federation of Pakistan with special reference to the status of Seraiki ethnic group. In fact ethnic expressions exist in all multicultural states and distinct ethnic groups evaluate themselves through communal prism. The less privileged groups develop abhorrence against the over – privileged groups due to the persistence of socioeconomic injustices. Factors like the gap between core and periphery, asymmetrical modernization and authoritarian trends lead towards ethnic disruption. Same is the case with Pakistan, a multilingual, multiracial and multiethnic state with federating units reflecting various diversities. The analysis of ethno-nationalism in Pakistan highlights factors, like regional cultural identity, relative deprivation among regions, centralized state structure, denial of accepting regional language as national language, and the absence of democratic values as being the root causes of the Bengali separatism. The assimilationist policies of the government do not acknowledge the regional/ethnic aspirations. Denial of pluralistic approach has been thwarting the demand for provincial autonomy. The nature of ethnic consciousness in the Seraiki belt, analyzed in this article, is found to be nurtured by the perceived socio-economic injustice at intra-provincial level—between the regions of South Punjab and Central and Northern Punjab put together

O Ptimization of B Lock E Ncryption B Ased S Peech C Oder a Gainst T Ransmission C Hannel N Oise

Compression of data has become a worldwide phenomenon during the past few decades for rea- son of achieving savings in band-width (BW) and hence makes it cost effective. The widespread practice of encryption of data has generated interest for many decades and it mainly aims at pro- tection of data. Combining these two apparently contrary processes (in terms of BW) is quite challenging. Whereas the research on concurrent data compression and data protection (encryp- tion) is still on, the methodology adopted by the author is unique and quite new. The most impor- tant aim of data compression technique is the need for curtailing the data storage and communi- cation expenses. The source message (long) is converted to a codeword (small). The key objec- tive of data encryption is to guard the integrity of data if it is intercepted by an eavesdropper. The plaintext is transformed in to ciphertext using an encryption key or keys. Combining the processes of compression and encryption together must be done in this order, that is, compres- sion followed by encryption because all compression techniques heavily rely on the redundancies inherently part of a regular text or speech. The speech compression has been achieved using Lempel-Ziv 78 algorithm and a new algorithm for encryption/decryption, named ―The Random- One, abbreviated as TR-1‖ is developed during this study and is thoroughly tested. The results obtained are quite encouraging. Firstly, contrary to the use of conventional methods the algo- rithm developed in this study does not use exclusive-OR (XOR) operation in Permutation (P) and Distribution (D) boxes for producing ciphertext from the plaintext. In this scheme pseudo ran- dom number (PRN) is used only to deceive the intruder by adding more confusion (meaning compared to the confusion due to the use of some tested algorithms used in this research). In fact only the sender of information and the intended recipient (not intruders) should be aware of the 44 bit positions filled by the PRN in a 128 word. The intended recipient discards these during deciphering process at the right time (these are disposed of before performing the inverse map- ping in the P-Box). Secondly, protection against attacks is further ensured by using two supple- mentary keys, one for the P-Box, and another for the D-box. In addition the routine key-set of the N selected algorithms further enhances the security. In a small set-up, the distribution of key-set can be mutually agreed upon by the users; but in a large set-up, the distribution of these sets can be accomplished using standard key distribution techniques. Moreover, the proposed algorithm- - also differs from the other methods currently in use due to deployment of a ―sentinel marker”; which is not adopted by other algorithms and this proposal is purely the brain child of the author. The sentinel marker is part of the secret key which is pre-decided and predetermined by the sender and the intended recipient of the information. Twenty bits (out of a total of 128) are used for the sentinel marker which amounts to 2^20 = 1,048,576 possibilities combined with 2^44 = 17.6 trillion possibilities of the ciphertext produced by the PRN. The job for the cryptanalyst to break this cipher becomes formidable and a fool-proof security of data is ensured.