First session of the third day of the international Urdu conference held at Arts Council of Pakistan Karachi with the panel discussion on “our learning and teaching conditions”. The session attended by Anwar Ahmed, Jafar Ahem and Haroon Rasheed and chaired by Ishrat Hussain, Atta Ur Rahman and Pirzada Qasim.

The educational system is like a pyramid and to reaching the highest level one has to pass the initial stages of the pyramid. For the top position of pyramid its basic should be based on the solid land, said by Dr. Ishrat Hussain former governor of state bank of Pakistan and educationalist. He further said that our education is very poor there are many gaps and we have to develop bridges between them one of the essential parts is our educational board system which should be developed on the standards of Aga Khan board. Private education has better standard than government educational system and more people are learning through private sector education but we should not avoid the part of GDP this is consumed on private sector education which is equal to the government budget. As a whole, we are consuming our 5% GDP on education.

Pirzada Qasim said that in public sector recommendations of the ministers prefer than merit. I am the witness to many such conditions where the school was locked and children were wandering outside the school, there was no enrollment and  teacher was getting pay for doing nothing. He said that lower middle class and specifically poor has no concern with education and it is hard for any social worker to motivate them from attending any educational institute we are spoiling our generations these children can play a great part in the development of the country.

Atta Ur Rahman said that over 25 million people are not attending school or never reach to school currently. Our 40 million children are attending school but the quality of education and the budget for the primary and secondary education is not being utilized properly if we use these funds we can get better results. These 40 million children are more than the population of dozen countries.

Anwar Ahmed spoke on the conditions of higher education. He said that we are making more and more universities. Universities are not supposed to provide education but its basic function is research but our universities are just selling degrees to illiterate people that cannot possess. He pursued that we need the people who want to educate people in real terms.

Jafar Ahmed said we progressed in the different aspects of educational systems since 1947. We have been included the different and diverse subject in the educational system but the government is not giving preference to the educational system in Pakistan and it is still in the fifth position in the priorities. In the last seventy years, we only progressed to 58 percent in literacy rate which is the claim of government while private and independent institutions are not endorsing it as it is lower than the claim.

Over forty million children are going to school these days and forty million even never went to schools. More than three lacks people are working to run their houses as a child labor and there are more than thirty-two thousands Madrasas in Pakistan where more than 22000 children are studying. There are forty-two universities in Sind and what they are distributing we all know very well.

Meanwhile, audience commented on the educational system in Pakistan. Qazi Afzal Hussain comes from India to attend the international Urdu conference he said that we have to set the target of education. Both countries are suffering the same situation regarding education. Where Raza Ali Abdi said we are progressing in education, I visited Baluchistan and Sindh and saw how small schools and private sector is coming up for the betterment of education.

At the end of session President Arts council, Ahmed Shah announced that Arts council will arrange a conference on education year from this year.

The second session of the third day of international Urdu conference held at arts council Karachi. The session was covering the literary relation between Pakistan and Japan. The guest was Heeroji Kataoka who is a prominent Urdu writer and a translator comes from Japan. He has done his masters in Urdu in 1971 from the University of Karachi and currently translating Urdu literature into the Japanese  language.  The session was hosted by Khurram Sohail. Mr. Hero Ji Kataoka said that it is the language which is developing the relationship between nations and literature is the structure of language. The Urdu language is rich with the different form of literature and I was convinced by a short story to read the urdu and latter writing in It.

At the end of the session president arts council of Pakistan Mr. Ahmed Shah announced that Arts Council will present an award to Hero Ji Katok’ka, however, he deserve a national level award for his contributions in the translating of Urdu language into Japanese.

Third session of the third day of international Urdu conference at arts council of Pakistan was covering the title “Our society and the Pakistani languages”. The session was attended by Syed Mazhar Jamil, Qasim Bhagio, Ali Baba Taj, Haris Khaliq and Nasir Abbas Nayer where session chaired by Imdad Hussaini, Anwar Ahmed, Muslim Saleem and Iftikhar Arif. Mr. Ayub Shaikh hosted the session. 

Iftikhar Arif Said that the main conflict is not between the Urdu and the regional language of Pakistan the actual war is between our regional languages with English. We cannot compromise our languages at the price of knowledge and philosophy in English. It is important to translate the western literature in Urdu and other regional languages to cope up with the modern needs of knowledge and information but we still couldn’t apart from other languages we have to face the imperialism of English which is a civilization’s conflict and affecting the whole world.

There is no conflict between Urdu and regional languages and if we want to grow and develop as a national we have to learn coexistence with all of the languages our region is owns. There are more than nine thousand languages in the world and over 76 languages are being spoken in the country. We have to respect each language without any discrimination regardless of what is the proportion of the speakers of that particular language. One language cannot hurt the other said by Shamim Ahmed. 

Anwar Ahmed said that languages develop with the passage of time and our all languages are important. The basic question is in which language we are teaching and transferring the traits into our youngsters. Imdad Hussain said that all of our languages are interlinked with each other, one language has no issue with the other and there are many words that are common and It seems that these words are the part of all languages.

Syed Mazhar Jamil read his article on “Our national development and languages consequences”. He said that society may have different languages at the same time. It is the essential part of the language that it varies. In the past years, our national narrative much affected the local and regional languages. Qasim Bhagio read his article on “internal relationship of Pakistani languages”. He said that our languages are interlinked and the threat that one language might replace other has no reality. Haris Khaliq presented his research on “our languages and our future” he said that there is no threat to our languages till we avoid our own languages. 

Nasir Abbas Nayer said that our languages are divided into four categories one is English, then Urdu, then regional languages and then fall these languages who have no identity but they still fall in the family of languages. He challenged that Quaid e Azam never used the word of National language instead he used the word governing language for Urdu at Dhaka University. He was in the favor of regional languages and it was a reality that Pakistan that time had English as the official language. Quaid e Azam said it to pursue the relationship and the official communication between the different regions in Pakistan. A nation is a new concept, an old concept was the community and a community might have different centers where nation has one center to communicate he added further. Ali Baba Taj enlightens the importance of regional and mother language in the life of human being.

The fourth session of third day of 10th international urdu conference cover the “Journey of TV Drama”. In this session the panelist was Bushra ansari, Haseena Moeen, Ayub Khawar and Iqbal Latif where Ahmed Shah hosted the session.