بلاگز

By Irfan Ali The most consequential asset of any province lies neither in its transport systems nor in the natural resources buried beneath its soil. It lies in the intellectual and productive potential of its people. Roads, bridges and public infrastructure may facilitate development, but it is an educated population that sustains it. For Sindh, therefore, the struggle to bring every child into the classroom is not merely an educational undertaking; it is a defining social and economic imperative. For years, the province’s education system has remained under intense public and media scrutiny. Dilapidated school buildings, a large out-of-school population, shortages of teachers, weak attendance mechanisms and the enduring controversy surrounding ghost employees have shaped much of the public discourse. These concerns are legitimate and cannot be dismissed. Yet they constitute only one side of a far more complex picture. Any balanced assessment must also take into account the extraordinary pressures under which Sindh’s education system has operated. Between 2010 and 2022, the province endured successive climate-related disasters that damaged educational infrastructure on an unprecedented scale. International and government-supported assessments indicate that more than 25,000 schools were partially or completely damaged during the catastrophic floods of 2010 and 2022. Approximately 5,655 educational institutions were affected in 2010, while the floods of 2022 damaged an estimated 19,808 schools. The consequences extended well beyond the destruction of buildings. Schools were converted into temporary shelters, access routes were washed away, communities were displaced and household incomes collapsed. For thousands of children, particularly those living in rural and flood-prone districts, the disaster widened the distance between home and classroom. Poverty, displacement and child labour compounded the risk of permanent educational exclusion, while girls faced the additional barriers of restricted mobility, safety concerns and the absence of nearby post-primary institutions. It is against this difficult backdrop that Sindh’s emerging education reforms must be understood. The province has not overcome its educational crisis, nor can decades of structural neglect be reversed within a single political or budgetary cycle. Nevertheless, a discernible change is taking place in the direction of policy. The emphasis is gradually shifting from fragmented interventions towards a broader framework encompassing school financing, teacher availability, institutional expansion, verified enrolment and digital accountability. One of the most notable developments has been the introduction of the School-Specific Budget, a decentralised financing mechanism intended to place limited but meaningful decision-making authority closer to the classroom. Under the initiative, school heads have been granted greater financial autonomy to address institution-specific needs rather than waiting for every minor repair or purchase to pass through layers of centralised administration. The programme was allocated Rs18.67 billion in the 2025–26 financial year. This was increased to Rs22.64 billion for 2026–27, reflecting a rise of approximately 21 per cent. The allocation for school furniture and fixtures was also raised substantially, from Rs3.81 billion to Rs7.62 billion. The significance of this reform lies not merely in the size of the allocation, but in the principle behind it. Schools do not face identical problems. An institution in a flood-affected village may urgently require roof repairs and drinking-water facilities, while an overcrowded urban school may need additional furniture, classrooms or sanitation arrangements. By allowing school administrations to respond to their own priorities, the School-Specific Budget introduces a degree of flexibility that has long been absent from public-school management. Across the province, the initiative has enabled schools to undertake essential repairs, restore classrooms, improve sanitation, purchase furniture and create safer and more welcoming learning environments. Such improvements may appear modest when viewed individually, but collectively they can strengthen parental confidence in public schools and help restore dignity to the learning experience. The battle against educational exclusion, however, cannot be won through infrastructure alone. Recognising the multiple social and economic factors that keep children outside school, the Sindh government, in collaboration with Unicef, has developed a five-year Multi-Sectoral Roadmap for Out-of-School Children and Adolescents. Covering the period from July 2025 to June 2030, the roadmap seeks to reduce the province’s out-of-school population by 50 per cent. Its multi-sectoral character is particularly significant. A child may remain outside school because of poverty, disability, child labour, the absence of identity documentation, inadequate transport or restrictive social norms. These barriers cannot be removed by the Education Department acting in isolation. They demand coordination across social protection, health, local government, civil registration and community-level institutions. The roadmap therefore represents an important conceptual shift. It treats educational exclusion not simply as a matter of insufficient enrolment, but as a broader social challenge requiring sustained and coordinated intervention. In doing so, it places the out-of-school child—not the administrative department—at the centre of policy. Teacher availability has been another persistent weakness of the public education system. A school without teachers may exist on official records, but it cannot function as an institution of learning. Sindh has sought to narrow this gap through one of the largest merit-based recruitment exercises undertaken in its education sector. Nearly 97,000 Primary School Teachers and Junior Elementary School Teachers were recruited through tests administered by Sukkur IBA University. The use of an independent testing service helped establish a more transparent route into public employment and strengthened the principle of merit in a sector historically vulnerable to political influence. The scale of the recruitment is important not only in numerical terms. Thousands of schools that had been operating with inadequate staff received additional teachers, while previously non-functional institutions gained the human resources required to reopen. The process also included women, persons with disabilities and members of minority communities, lending the recruitment exercise a wider dimension of social inclusion. The growing presence of female teachers is particularly consequential for rural and conservative communities. In many such areas, parents are more willing to enrol and retain their daughters when women teachers are available. Teacher recruitment, therefore, is not merely an employment measure; it is also a means of improving access, attendance and public confidence. The province has more recently expanded its focus towards specialised teaching categories. In July 2026, the government approved

By Sania Rahim Have you ever noticed how much of your life exists online? From social media posts and online shopping to mobile apps and search engines, almost everything we do leaves a digital footprint. Technology has made communication faster, improved access to information, and made daily life more convenient. However, it has also created a serious problem: the loss of privacy. Many people share personal information without realizing how easily it can be collected, stored, analyzed, and even misused. In today’s digital world, protecting privacy has become more important than ever before. One of the main reasons for the loss of privacy is the widespread use of social media. Millions of people share their photos, locations, opinions, and personal experiences every day. While social media helps people stay connected with friends and family, it also allows strangers, advertisers, and even cybercriminals to access personal information. Many users do not read privacy policies or adjust their privacy settings, making their accounts and personal data more vulnerable to misuse. Another major concern is the collection of personal data by websites, online platforms, and mobile applications. Many apps request access to our contacts, camera, microphone, location, and other personal information, even when such access is not necessary for their services. This data is often used to provide personalized advertisements or improve user experience, but it may also be shared with third parties without users fully understanding how their information is being handled. In some cases, data breaches expose the personal details of millions of people. The loss of privacy can have serious consequences. It increases the risk of identity theft, online scams, cyberbullying, financial fraud, and unauthorized access to personal accounts. Once information is uploaded to the internet, it is often difficult—or even impossible—to remove it completely. A single careless post or data leak can damage a person’s reputation, affect future education or employment opportunities, and threaten personal security. Protecting privacy requires both awareness and responsibility. People should create strong and unique passwords, enable two-factor authentication, avoid sharing sensitive information online, and carefully review the permissions they grant to apps and websites. They should also update their software regularly and think carefully before clicking suspicious links or downloading unknown files. Schools, families, and governments should educate people about digital safety, cybersecurity, and responsible online behavior. Privacy is not just a personal preference; it is a basic human right. As technology continues to advance, we must enjoy its benefits without sacrificing our security, freedom, and personal privacy. By making informed choices, using technology responsibly, and respecting the privacy of others, we can help build a safer, more secure, and more trustworthy digital world for future generations.

By Mehreen Imambaksh Throughout history, women have possessed powerful thoughts, deep emotions, and creative voices; yet, many of these voices have gone unnoticed. Their experiences were frequently limited to their homes, their abilities were questioned, and their intellectual development was neglected. However, literature, history, and social thought expose that women were capable of uttering knowledge, shaping culture, and influencing society, but patriarchal systems often restricted their visibility. For centuries, women were expected to remain silent in public intellectual areas. Their role was widely limited to household responsibilities, whereas education, authorship, and public speaking were dominated by men. Yet despite these barriers, many women endured to write, think, and challenge the systems that tried to silence them. One beautiful example can be found in the nineteenth century with the eminent novel *Wuthering Heights*, written by Emily Brontë (1847). Today the novel is considered one of the masterpieces in English literature. Moreover, Emily Brontë did not publish it under her original name; rather, she used the pen name Ellis Bell. Similarly, her sisters also adopted the same approaches. Charlotte Brontë published *Jane Eyre* under the name of Currer Bell, and Anne Brontë published *The Tenant of Wildfell Hall* under the name of Acton Bell. The reason behind these pen names was simple but widely revealing: society frequently refused to take women writers seriously. The Brontë sisters were highly imaginative and intellectually able, yet they felt pressured to hide their identities to ensure their work could be approved. Their circumstances examine the huge restrictions placed upon women’s voices during that time. Long before the Brontë sisters, early feminist thinkers had raised concerns about women’s lack of education and freedom. In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote *A Vindication of the Rights of Woman*, challenging that women should have equal access to education and intellectual opportunities. She said that women were treated as inferior in society not because they lacked capability, but because they were refused the chance to advance their minds. More than a century later, this problem was discussed again by Virginia Woolf in her masterpiece work *A Room of One’s Own* (1929). She famously argued that women in the past were refused both financial independence and private space, which restricted them from freely uttering knowledge. Therefore, she said a woman needs not merely talent but also freedom and equality to express her feelings and thoughts. Modern scholars have further examined how systems of knowledge can silence subaltern voices. In her essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1988), Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak introduced the idea of epistemic violence, which means how dominant systems of knowledge remove or suppress the voices of certain groups, especially women and colonized communities. When women’s ideas are ignored or removed, their experiences are excluded from the production of knowledge, creating a form of intellectual oppression. These rooted examples depict that women’s silence was never because of a lack of intelligence or creativity. Instead, it was the result of social systems that demotivated or limited their role in participation in intellectual and public life. Even today, this evidence remains visible in many societies. In many cultures, women still hesitate to talk openly, particularly on public platforms or digital spaces. Furthermore, social expectations and fear of judgment frequently create unseen obstacles that prevent women from sharing their thoughts and feelings. This hesitation is not always enforced directly; sometimes it evolves internally due to long-standing social pressures. Moreover, I personally experienced this hesitation in my own life. For many years, I believed in the significance of women’s ability, yet I was not actively immersed in initiatives related to it. One cause for this was my anxiety about visibility on social media platforms to reveal my feelings and ideas because I feared how society, especially as a Baloch student, might react to a woman openly sharing her ideas. This anxiety is not unfamiliar. Many women feel unsure about expressing themselves publicly because they expect critique or misunderstanding. However, personal growth frequently begins with a small step. For me, that step was creating my social media platforms such as Medium, a LinkedIn profile, and starting to share my writings, including poems and reflections based on my experiences. At the start, this act felt common, yet slowly opened new chances. Through this visibility, I became connected with extensive intellectual and professional networks, which ultimately led me to become immersed in women’s ascension. Being involved in this initiative has allowed me to interact with women from various cultures, backgrounds, and perspectives. These interactions have been widely improving. They have shown me that when women communicate and share experiences across cultures, they create unique forms of understanding and collective growth. This experience shows that women’s empowerment does not always happen through major changes, but it begins slowly when women start to express themselves, engage in conversations, and share knowledge with others. Communication is one of the influential tools that helps women to connect their personal experiences with global discussions about equality and justice. However, change needs cooperation. Women’s power should not be seen as an effort between men and women. Instead, it should be perceived as a collaborative struggle to create a fair and inclusive society. Both men and women play a major role in supporting and motivating women’s voices. Traditionally, patriarchal societies frequently reduced women to limited roles, especially examining their function as a child-bearing machine. Whereas motherhood is an essential and valuable role, it should never define the entirety of a woman’s identity. Women have intellectual capabilities, creative skills, and leadership qualities that can contribute importantly to society. Education plays an essential role in changing these circumstances. When women receive education, they gain the confidence and knowledge necessary to contribute actively in social, economic, and intellectual life. Educated women are more capable of expressing their thoughts, challenging injustice, and participating in the development of their communities. Furthermore, the impact of women’s education extends beyond the individual. When women are educated, they can brighten their children’s lives and motivate the next generations to learn. Historically, when women