Nations are built on a strong foundation of talents, education and scholarship. The paradox of Pakistan is that despite its vast and varied human resources, it continues to be bogged down in a morass of crises and conflicts that range from political instability and corruption to acute shortages of power, water and other basic amenities. But all is not that bad if Prof. Atta-ur-Rahman is to be believed. Prof. Rahman, who revolutionized the country's higher education system mainly during former president Gen. Pervez Musharraf's era, was here to attend the annual conference of the Engineers Welfare Forum. Prof. Rahman is confident that Pakistan will ultimately emerge as a formidable nation. A leading scientist of Pakistan and a known face in the Muslim World who has to his credit 852 publications in leading international journals, Prof. Rahman believes continued education reform and a government that has a vision for long-term investment in both primary and higher education is the best approach to achieving growth and meaningful results. “Education is a long term investment. There is no magic wand to change the scenario overnight. Knowledge is important. Wealth lies not in gold or oil or minerals but in children who are the future of a nation. We have to have a government with a vision and one which understands that the real wealth of a country is its children and progress can only be made by investing in education. So unless you have a visionary, technologically-competent and honest government, you cannot make progress,” he said. According to a 2011 United Nations Development Program report, Pakistan has a literacy rate of 58 percent, putting it well behind other Indian subcontinent nations including Sri Lanka (94 percent), India (74 percent), Nepal (68 percent) and is only marginally ahead of Bangladesh's 56 percent. According to Prof. Rahman illiteracy must be combated with a balanced approach that improves both primary and higher education. “There are a large number of functionally illiterate people in Pakistan. It is a big problem. India has been investing in education right since the days of former prime minister Nehru and Sri Lanka has made fantastic progress in improving primary education but there should be a balanced approach to education. I was talking to the President of Sri Lanka a few years ago and he said they made a bad mistake by just focusing on improving school-level education, so while they have a 94 percent literacy rate, their universities are very weak and they don't have a strong enough higher education system.” While the state of primary education may be grim, Prof. Rahman paints a much different picture of the state of Pakistan's higher education, which he says has not only drastically improved but is a model that has been emulated by neighboring countries. “Currently, five universities in Pakistan are among the top 500 universities of the world. In the year 2000, there were only 500 research papers from Pakistan that were published every year in international journals. But now, in 2011, some 6,200 papers were published in international journals. So there has been a 12-fold increase,” he said. Relations between India and Pakistan have recently improved and the two countries have also boosted trade ties. Prof. Rahman, who is the president of Pakistan Academy of Sciences, the highest-level science body in the country, recently hosted a delegation headed by the president of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) and thinks the two countries should cooperate in sectors of mutual interest like education, agriculture, engineering and health. “The President of the Indian National Science Academy Prof. Krishan Lal came to Islamabad along with a six-member team about three months ago and we have signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate in science and technology. It is being done now and I am planning to visit India in September. There's a lot of scope for cooperation between the two countries,” he said. “We live in a world where knowledge-based economies dominate. Countries that realize this and invest in human resources move ahead. Our scientists and engineers are already playing a pivotal role and this role can be further strengthened through collaborations with other countries and academic institutions,” he said. __
