Professional Documents
Culture Documents
SOCIETY:
When someone start to delve into the question "what is society?" you will
realize that this is indeed a very deep subject. There is no one answer
because a society is not a thing that can be easily explained in one or two
sentences. In fact, this could actually be a topic for a thesis by a graduate
student in philosophy and it would take many volumes to include all the
possible answers. Let's start by looking at what we consider to be a
society.
There are also other factors that separate smaller societies from one
another. These include culture, language, race, and religion. Within a
society, there can be many different cultures. If you look at the whole
world as one society, you can easily realize just how many differences
there are. Even within a country, city or town, you have numerous
differences and you can even have different societies within a
neighborhood. The neighborhood of a city could be an ethnic society all its
own.
In the larger frame of things, all these societies interact with one another
on a daily basis bringing new ideas and ways of doing things. Customs
transfer from one culture to another, immigrants become assimilated
within a society and people react with violence when a part of their
society is threatened. All of these things make up a society, which is more
of a quality than a thing.
- Child labor
- Poverty
- Unemployment
- Illiteracy
- Terrorism
- Population growth
- Diseases
- Smuggling
- Drug abuse
- Prostitution
- Internal and international migration
- Discrimination of sex
UNEMPOLEMENT:
The problem of unemployment is a world-wide reality. The developed
countries like the U.S., England, France, Germany, Italy, etc. also suffer
from this problem, but it is more pronounced in Pakistan and India.It is
one of the major causes of our poverty, backwardness, crimes and
frustration among the people. Because of large scale unemployment there
is no suitable employment for the people. They are forced to remain idle.
There are millions of young men and women waiting for job opportunities.
This chronic problem of unemployment is not confirmed to any particular
class, segment or society. It is all pervading. There is massive
unemployment among educated, well-trained and skilled people, and it is
also there among semi-skilled and unskilled laborers, small and marginal
farmers and workers. Then there is underemployment. The jobs being
created have miserably failed to keep pace with the ever increasing
number of job-seekers. It is a problem which presents a great challenge
to leaders, thinkers, planners, economists, industrialists and
educationists.
TERRIORISM:
Pakistan is a country that has only recently had serious problems with
terrorism, largely because of the government allying itself with the
United States in the global war on terror. Currently however, the
biggest threat to the state and citizens of Pakistan emanates killing
civilians and policemen to achieve their political ends, origination of
which can be attributed to General Zia ul-Haq's controversial
"Islamization" policies, the president of the country in the 1980s. His
tenure saw Pakistan's exceeding involvement in Soviet-Afghan War,
which led to greater influx of ideologically driven Afghan Arabs in the
tribal areas and the explosion of kalashnikov and drugs culture. The
state and its intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence in alliance
with the United States and Central Intelligence Agency encouraged the
"mujahideen" to fight the proxy war against the Soviet Union, most of
which were never disarmed after the war. Some of these groups were
later activated under the behest of the state in the form of Lashkar-e-
Taiba, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and others were encouraged like Taliban
to achieve state's agenda in Kashmir and Afghanistan. The same
groups are now taking on the state itself.
From the summer of 2007 to late 2009, more than 5,500 people were
killed in suicide and other attacks on civilians. The attacks have been
attributed to a number of sources: sectarian violence mainly between
Sunni and Shia Muslims the origin of which is blamed by some on
initiated from 1911 to 1988; the easy availability of guns and
explosives of a "kalishnikov culture" and influx of ideologically driven
"Afghan Arabs" based in or near Pakistan, originating from and the
subsequent war against the Afghan communists in the 1980s which
blew back into Pakistan; Islamist insurgent groups and forces such as
the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba; Pakistan's thousands of
fundamentalist madrassas which are thought by some to provide
training for little except jihad; secessionists movements the most
significant of which is the Balochistan liberation movement blamed on
regionalism problematic in a country with Pakistan's diverse cultures,
languages, traditions and customs.
PROSTITUTION:
A report published in 2001 by the National Commission for Child Welfare
and Development (NCCWD) revealed the existence of child prostitution in
Pakistan, the first official admission of this violation of children’s rights in
the country. According to the report, both girls and boys are victims of
prostitution. For example, in some parts of the North-West Frontier
Province (NWFP), which borders Afghanistan, older, wealthy men “keep”
young boys for sexual gratification, while girls from the poorest areas of
the country are being taken by organized rings to clandestine brothels in
large cities. Most of the girls prostituted in Punjab Province come from the
NWFP or from Afghan refugee camps there, and seem to be forced into
prostitution when they are in their early teens.
Prostitution in Pakistan is a taboo culture of sex-trade that exists as an
open secret although being illegal. Prostitution is largely based in
organisational set-ups like brothels or furthered by individual call girls.
Sex-trade is deemed illegal due to the declaration of extramarital sex as
an immoral activity. Prostitutes in the country, thus, operate underground
and in spite of the legal difficulties, and contrary to popular belief,
prostitution is thriving in the country. Most analysts recognize poverty as
a crucial factor in driving women towards an occupation such as
prostitution. Both female and male prostitution have grown in operational
yield in Pakistan over the years. With this increase in professional sex-
trade in the country, non-governmental organisations are beginning to
worry about issues like discrimination and AIDS. After the partition in
1947, Pakistan inherited the historical red-light districts in Lahore and
Multan including the infamous Hira Mandi area. These were well-
developed and attracted both wealthy clients and those looking for
singers and actresses. The prostitutes and associates in the sex-trade
were named kanjars. while their musician companions were known as the
community of mirasis. The prostitutes would usually, and still do, dance
to the music of harmonium and tabla played by the mirasis. Where
Lahore and Multan were the known contenders in the trade, other cities
also had their own red-light districts which may include Ghulam abad and
Aminpur bazar in Faisalabad Napier Road in Karachi and Qasai Gali in
Rawalpindi. The prostitutes retained the hereditary character of their
occupation and the social stigma.
During the rule of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who tried to Islamise the
nation, prostitution was viewed as an "evil" in society and attempts were
made to eradicate prostitution. Attempts were also made to curb music
and dancing. The hours for performance of the dancing girls were reduced
to two hours every evening. Police checkpoints were established in all
entrances of red-light districts during the hours of rehearsing or practising
music where the names of the visitors in red-light areas were recorded in
police register frightening the clients away.
SMUGGLING:
The current incident in the Hazar Gunji area of Quetta city of Balochistan
Province is just tip of the iceberg about the horrendous and wide scale
human trafficking in the Pakistan. From all the provinces, not only the
local people are shipped illegally to the Middle East, Europe, Australia and
to Mexico but also the people from Afghanistan, Central Asian States and
Iran also use Pakistan as transit to go across the seas. Very few of them
manage to reach their destinations. Most of them either die due to the
suffocation in the containers, some of them die while trying to swim their
way through the seas, or traversed their way through the deserts or some
of them become victim of border police bullets. Some of them die with
hunger, thirst or disease along the way and some just perish with fatigue.
The recent incident in the Quetta in which more than 60 people died in
the container due to suffocation is just a grim reminder as what is
happening in the fatherland. The network of human smugglers is very
strong and integrated in the Pakistan and they are present in every city
and town. In the name of lucrative employment, colorful life, and dollars;
these smugglers extort huge money from the people and then dump them
in sea or in desert or in any foreign jail. Thousand of Pakistanis are dying
with misery in the jails of Europe and Middle East and there is no hope for
them.
Tell you what, if we work hard that much in our own country what we do
abroad, we could earn much more and live with respect and regard with
our own families. In foreign countries, Pakistanis live in a single small
room with dozens of people, they eat very less and they spend nothing
and they work round the clock. If they do that in Pakistan, they would be
earning lots and lots of more and that is in their own country near to their
dear ones. There is nothing like home.
DESCRIMINATION OF SEX:
Gender discrimination in Pakistan Women in Pakistan mainly due to the
social and cultural conditions is more disadvantaged than the women in
modern western democratic societies. Educated and professional women
in urban areas and from upper classes of the society enjoy much better
status and rights than illiterate women in rural areas. Women in tribal
areas of Balochistan, Frontier province and remote areas of southern
Punjab and interior Sindh live in more unpleasant social conditions than
women in other parts of the country. In rural areas, women are
discouraged in attaining higher education just for the sake of avoiding the
time when women can lead man while in urban areas; women are
encouraged to get educated, so girls energetically join the technical
courses. But after getting technically or professionally qualified they are
not granted permission to work, this is the reason we don’t find girls at
offices as much as we find men. This is a major drawback as it leads a
nation towards economic disaster as half the nation in the form of girls if
won’t participate then economic will diminish. They are not allowed to
participate in economic activities and hence their professional qualification
goes in the bin. The story of social and economic injustice with reference
to gender discrimination is very long, as it exists in almost all the
societies and economies. Girls excel in academics so more girls avail
admissions in medical colleges. After getting qualified as M.B.B.S,
majority girls do not practice due to our social factors. In villages, girls
are usually not asked whom do they want to marry; parents just fix their
wedding of their daughters to the groom of their choice. Sometime for
land and money, parents fix the wedding of their young girl to an old
man. It has also been observed that if a couple in involved in some
unethical practice, people points the girl only while boy is never
considered guilty. If a female marries twice or thrice, she is considered
awful while the case is totally different in the case of a male. Divorced
lady is treated in the same manner. Today’s life is male oriented. Females
face gender discrimination everywhere. Discrimination is generated when
the balance is not found. What to blame other people, when parents
themselves initiate gender disparity. Some Parents only send their sons to
schools while some send their sons and daughters both to schools but
they put boys in good schools and girls in government local schools.
Some broad minded people send both sons and daughter to good schools
but at the time of sending children abroad, they discriminate and send
their sons at first place. Is it good? Should they do it? Well what to say as
we are also a part of this system and we might behave similar when we’ll
face the same scenario. So we should think over it and we must treat our
sons and daughter all equally.
THE END