IPSS Political School, Summer 2008

The school consisted of four sessions spread out over two days, the 23^rd and 24^th of August, '08.

I was lucky enough to be invited and found it a great forum for interacting with scholars and thinkers I'd heard much of (a few I'd even read) but never met or certainly not in a setting where they were so accessible.

One of the nice things about the school was that it was organised specifically with youth activists in mind, people who had participated to some extent in the groundswell of support for the movement for an independent judiciary and an end to Emergency Rule.

In addition to links to the reading material which was provided to the participants before the school, you can also listen to the sessions (both the talks and the discussions that followed) at the IPSS page. Both streaming (from imeem) and downloading from the IPSS site are supported, depending on whether you have a blazing fast connection or a slower one you can use to download the file for listening in one go (like on your mp3 player).

Some rants are just too good!

This one, for example, covers all the relevant issues without so much as pausing for breath:

"For god sakes wake up you slumbering fools. Musharraf’s exit does not have to mean the return of another evil period for us. Why cant we make it mean something more and bring in more educated people into the services and politics. Talk, speak out, and demand action and accountability so that these goons don’t get to loot us again. Lets not be quiet and say lawyers are liars and politicians are pansies. Maybe if we just worked just as hard as making things work as we do in criticising, things could get better. Start by doing your bit – bit by bit – and wait for the change to happen. Don’t sit and complain in your comfortable houses and cars. Don’t do that because it doesn’t help anyone."

Get the full note here >>

Brilliant job by the author Saira Ansari.