By the way
More holidays
Hafizur Rahman
There are spoilsports everywhere, only we have more than our share of them in Pakistan. Usually their sanctimonious outbursts are aimed at innocent young people whom they cannot bear to see enjoying themselves with kalashinkovs and stolen motorcars. But they are also after poor government servants whose sole means of entertainment is a holiday from work, or rather no work.
These spoilsports saw no point in three closed days for Eid-ul-Azha last month and said something silly about their economic effect on banking. They could not stand the five-day week and made a caretaker government (I forget which one, there have been so many) withdraw this facility. I don't know why. At one stage of our PPP-PML seesaw, some fans of Mian Nawaz Sharif, counting the black deeds of the Benazir government, cited the five-day week as one of them. They could not dare to look at the truth in this regard.
The truth was that previously too there had been a five-day week in Pakistan - in the time of President Ziaul Haq, Mian Sahib's hero. It was undone when Ghulam Ishaq Khan became President -- another spoilsport. While General Zia dismissed one National Assembly, he dismissed two. Maybe the second one could have been saved if GIK had five weekdays to do mischief in instead of six. But he even worked on Friday, the then closed day, having nothing better to do.
Sardar Muhammad Iqbal, our first Ombudsman (still unmatched in greatness by those who followed him) used to say that the bureaucrat was supreme in Pakistan. From getting an infant inoculated to setting up a steel mill, you have to deal with him. There is no escape. Sardar Sahib did not say so but he probably felt that the more you keep the bureaucrat away from his office the better it would be for the common man. Perhaps that is why he introduced the five-day week in the Wafaqi Mohtasib's Secretariat much before General Zia thought of it.
When the Pakistan government adopted the idea, I asked Sardar Iqbal - I was in the Ombudsman's office then - whether he would like to go a step farther and enforce a four-day week for his staff. He didn't even smile at my joke. Actually he used to do more work in one day than a senior Pakistani officer does in a whole week. But he genuinely believed in two off days, and as an offset, increased the daily working hours.
The trouble is that in Pakistan you can never find out why a particular government passed a certain order or introduced a certain measure. The only official explanation is that it was done for the public good, when all the time the public is unable to understand what good it has done to it. When you ask the common man (if you can find one around) his comment on government orders are, "They are badshah log; they can do what they like. What do we poor folks know how their minds work?"
So, it would be impossible to discover, even if someone had all the relevant government records to help him in his research, why that particular PPP government ordered the five-day week. However, I have my own method of research for which I need no files and papers because I base my results on the known psyche of the people of Pakistan. I may add that I have many common men living in my neighbourhood who have the most witty and piquant observations to make on the government's doings.
I have developed my theory on this point and I think most readers will agree with it. I honestly believe that the PPP government's support for the five-day week did not arise from its desire to be efficient or modern. It was only a proof of it being a representative regime mirroring the aspirations of a people who have no inclination to work and want more and more holidays. Look at some of the religious parties, which are actually political parties although they do business in politics as a sideline.
But these parties do not tell us what the Muslims of Pakistan should do on these closed days except not to work. What these parties should do is to conduct research into Muslim history and name all the saints and spiritual personalities who have made some contribution to the spread and glory of Islam. It should not be difficult to find out their dates of birth and the dates on which they joined their Maker. The idea is that, as an expression of devotion to these great men of Islam, the people of Pakistan should eschew work on their anniversaries. There is no better way to honour them.
I once knew an administrative expert from Holland. He had spent some years in Pakistan trying to put some sense into our government's working system, and we grew friendly. One evening when he was in a particularly candid mood, he said, "I honestly believe that if you close the Pakistan Secretariat for a full month every year - apart from the other holidays of course - nothing terrible will happen. In fact most of the people's problems will get solved by themselves."
But I want to talk about the humanising impact of holidays. In the United States some bosses literally force their men to go and enjoy a week or ten days from work, preferably with a girl friend, leaving their families behind. I realise this may be difficult here, for public servants will ask for girl friends at government expense to take with them on the trips. But something of the idea could be adopted.
If the government were to accept my proposal for more holidays, I would draw up a schedule on how to spend these days profitably. After that the spoilsports will not have the cheek to say to you and me, "Just tell me what you do on Allama Iqbal's birthday. Cut a cake? And how do you spend the Defence of Pakistan Day? By having all the kitchen knives and other weapons of offence sharpened by the itinerant Pathan?"
This guy has real sense of humour!
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