Noor Shahidin
A three-day seminar on “Sustainable and Flexible Societies” was being held at the University of Chitral. At the same time, four young people from Chitral reportedly died by suicide. Yet, apparently, none of the speakers—or the final speaker—addressed this deeply troubling issue.
If a society cannot openly discuss the loss of its young people, their mental and social pressures, and the conditions that may lead them to suicide, then what do we really mean by a “sustainable and flexible society”?
Sustainability is not only about the environment, economy, or institutions. A sustainable society must also be capable of protecting its young people, recognizing emerging social problems, listening to them, and adapting its institutions to changing social realities.
Perhaps this should have been one of the most important questions for the seminar: Are our academic discussions keeping pace with the problems actually facing Chitrali society?
Mohtaram Noor Shahidin sahib is hundred percent right what are the benefits of this useless and meaningless Seminar where thy can’t raise and talk about the most burning issue.of the youths of Chitral?? He raised very well accurate question whats the mening of sustainability Specially with the context of Chitrali Society??? please stop this kind of Mazaq with the Chitrali public using their taxes money, if you guys can’t deal with their long awaited issues.
nicley written !
Let us start with the question Noor Shahidin has thrown into the seminar hall of Chitral University, situated at the beautiful Sinlasht area of Chitral, and quite rightly so: what, exactly, did this three day seminar do for the people of Chitral?
What did it say about the issues that are actually keeping people awake at night? What did all those learned speeches, scholarly titles and academic discussions amount to when it came to the problems staring Chitral in the face?
It is a question the organisers cannot simply brush aside.The seminar was grandly titled “Sustainable and Flexible Societies. A rather impressive title, certainly. But what, in practical terms, did the participants actually discuss? What did sustainability mean in the context of Chitral?
What did flexibility mean in a society struggling with profound social and economic pressures? And why was one of the most disturbing social issues facing the area, the increasing incidence of suicide, apparently nowhere to be seen during three full days of academic discussion?
Yes, three days, and not a word of serious engagement with one of the darkest realities confronting the people of Chitral. What on earth was the seminar about, then?
This is where the performance of the university leadership deserves particularly uncomfortable scrutiny. One cannot help but feel sorry for a vice chancellor who claims the credentials of a sociologist but appears unable to demonstrate any meaningful understanding of the society his university is supposed to be serving.
A PhD in sociology is not a magic certificate that automatically confers an understanding of society. Sociology is not the art of decorating speeches with fashionable terminology. It is the study of society in all its complexity, contradictions, tensions and failures.
If the vice chancellor cannot explain what “Sustainable and Flexible Societies” actually demands from a seminar of sociologists, then perhaps the university has a more fundamental problem than the seminar itself.
Noor Shahi sahib is absolutely right to raise the question of suicide. Indeed, the question should have been raised by every sociologist sitting in that seminar.
Where were they when this issue needed intellectual attention? Where was the discussion about the social pressures contributing to despair? Where was the examination of changing family structures, economic hardship, unemployment, migration, isolation, social expectations and the weakening of traditional support networks?
Where was the sociology?Apparently, everywhere except where society needed it. One wonders whether some of these academics have become so accustomed to speaking about society in abstract academic language that they no longer recognise society when it is sitting right outside their conference hall.
If the participants could not connect their academic expertise with the most urgent social questions confronting Chitral, then the organisers should have the courage to explain why the seminar was held in the first place.
Perhaps it was simply another academic exercise in which everyone talked, everyone listened, everyone applauded and nobody actually said anything that mattered.
Good one, Noor Shahi sahib! Keep asking the awkward questions, and don’t become one of those columnist praisers who only know how to clap!