Be informed about your country's governance!

Let me share something really exciting that I learned this semester in my optional subject, "Governance and Public trust". Some of you, like me, won't know what governance is. Governance is the process of decision making and the process by which these decisions are implemented or not implemented.

Unlike government, governance includes all the stakeholders. Three main stakeholders of governance  are civil society, government, and market. These three make governance at national. Good governance is a normative (opinion based) concept. Good  governance includes parameter, such as it is  participatory, consensus oriented, accountable, transparent, responsive, effective and efficient, equitable and inclusive and follows the rule of law. For further information on this topic, click here.

Different agencies calculate governance standards. These include World Bank, Asian Development Bank, UNESCAP, etc. Here I will tell you a website where you can find governance percentile rank ( more rank near 100 more high is the governance level) of your country through parameters such as government effectiveness and efficiency, rule of law, voice and accountability, etc. You can compare the rank of your country  with other countries and the rank of these indicator under different political regimes.

Step 1

Go to this website  http://databank.worldbank.org/data/views/variableselection/selectvariables.aspx?source=Worldwide-Governance-Indicators

Step 2

You will see Country, Timeline, and Series. Select the wanted series (parameter), timeline, and country. If you will select two countries then you can compare the selected indicator over the selected timeline. 

Step 3

After you have selected your required information look at the information given in the top right corner. You would see table, map, graph, etc. Click on the type in which you want to use this data. You can also download graphs in excel sheets and the click line graph icon to form a line graph.

 

I enjoyed this practical, I hope you will. Even if you are not interested just try this activity once. With these indicators you can have informed opinions. You can argue on the basis of facts.

'In my time' (میرے زمانہ میں)

It has been only two decades since I was born and I already refer to my childhood as  'In my time' (میرے زمانہ میں). When I try to explain my seven year younger sister something, I often use this term.  My mother then laughs at me and tells me that I speak as if I am so very old. To me, though, this seems a very correct notion. The time that I am in now is completely different from that of my childhood. I will elaborate these feeling with certain experiences of my own:

1. When I was a child, mobile phones were not so common. I remember that we used to go to a PCO (telephone booth) and call our relatives. There used to be a card, which ,when used, allowed us to talk for few minutes. Some time after this my father bought a mobile phone. This phone had a blue screen with black font. This screen was no bigger then a scientific calculator's screen. We also had a telephone installed later on. Then we bought a computer. We used a card (more specifically called Rabata Online) to connect to the internet. A relative of mine had a phone with camera and colors, and it was like a wonder for me. Now you see smart phones have so many functions and are so commonly used. Has not the technology improved in these two decades??

2. The entertainment industry has changed a great deal. Hollywood and English music has suffered a less sudden change then bollywood. When I was a kid there would be a brave and good hero and a nice and beautiful heroine in most of the movies. The music used to be soft and the voices for heroine's singing used to be shrill. Now-a-days women with heavy and less shrill voices are preferred. Heroes are mostly thieves, etc. The idea of beauty has changed a great deal.

A heroine of that time

A heroine of this time

Above all, I have changed. Not because I have grown up, but because I am not the same person, in nature, anymore. I, in my own account, have improved a lot. My interests changed. I developed new hobbies, such as reading novels (I love to read novels). I have observed my errors and weaknesses, and  I have tried and am trying to improve. I have changed from over confident to less confident (this is wrong but also good at times). My tastes have changed, my choices are now more well thought of. Nevertheless, change is still required and change is inevitable.

There was a time when I asked my parents that how can they tell anybody, whose relative died, who they do not know properly that we are so sorry for your loss and that the person who died was a very good or important person.

Now that I am few years older, I can understand their condition. I will explain my feelings by using some of my experiences.

A couple of weeks ago my van fellow told me that she had been absent in the last week because of her father's death. In response I looked at her once and then bent by head down. I felt burden all over my chest. I couldn't breathe easily. I then lift up  my head and looked at others who were listening. I met there gaze. At that moment I wanted to condole. I wanted to tell her that how sorry I was for her loss, but no words came. My mouth was dry. Usually I am  very talkative but at that time I could say nothing. The strength that she was showing was looking like a weakness to me. When I see strong people in these circumstances I think that I don't know how hard they are trying right know. Like if I'll break them if I will say something.

A few months back, I came to know that my class fellows mother died. When she came back to university I had to condole her. I went to her. I though of appropriate words, but there were no words. I just  lightly touched her shoulder and said 'I feel sad about your mother's death'.

I feel sorrow because now I can fully realize how important a family is. I love my family and I realize that as I am growing my parents are also aging. Now I feel the pain others are facing. Condolence has been recommended in my religion.

So please take care of your parents, you grand parents, and your brothers and sisters. Love them.

Reading, a tool for reducing stress!

I am going to recommend reading for stress reduction. I have used it to cure and reduce my stress in past couple of weeks. I was like madly searching for novels, and I completed like 9 novels, 3 days at max  for each. To me reading novels keeps your mind busy. People say that reading mostly  pleasurable novels is helpful, but sometimes reading depressive novels can lead you into thinking that your problems are much smaller than the problems of the charcters of these books.

According to research done at Sussex university, reading, even for six minutes, can reduce stress effectively. Psychologists believe this is because the human mind has to concentrate on reading and the distraction of being in a literary world eases the tensions in muscles and the heart. The research was carried out on a group of volunteers by consultancy Mindlab International at the University of Sussex.Their stress levels and heart rate were increased through a range of tests and exercises before they were then tested with a variety of traditional methods of relaxation.Reading worked best, reducing stress levels by 68 per cent. Dr Lewis, who conducted the test, said: "Losing yourself in a book is the ultimate relaxation. "This is particularly poignant in uncertain economic times when we are all craving a certain amount of escapism. "It really doesn't matter what book you read, by losing yourself in a thoroughly engrossing book you can escape from the worries and stresses of the everyday world and spend a while exploring the domain of the author's imagination. "This is more than merely a distraction but an active engaging of the imagination as the words on the printed page stimulate your creativity and cause you to enter what is essentially an altered state of consciousness." Studies reveal that listening to music reduces stress,  having cup of tea of coffee lower it  by 54 per cent and taking a walk by 42 per cent.

Stop and ponder

Sitting in the class where we were talking about religions a memory awakened in my mind. In order to make me understand that why do we need religion, my mother used to tell me when I was a child that whenever we buy a machine we are given a manual with it which explains how the machine works and what it can do, In the same way God is our Manufacturer and He has given us religion, and therefore a guide of how to spent our lives. We are made above all organisms because our brains not only process information, but also the ability to gain knowledge. Just because we have such a brain we go on in our lives and try to destroy nature. Just another day I was sitting in my geology class and my teacher, in a very light mood, said that an earthquake is nothing more than the relaxation of earth. This made me think of how trivial we are against all the things made by God. We cannot save ourselves from fire, water, earthquakes, volcanic eruption etc, not even from a mosquito with only one leg (I am referring to the death of the infidel Namrood by a one legged mosquito).  We are so trivial things and yet so proud of ourselves. We say that stars are not ever existing entities and they are continuously loosing energy. Why don’t we remember that our sun is also a star and is going to burn out someday? Like all things, the solar system will die.

We all know these things yet we behave like we own this world. We fight, we gamble, we put our elders into old houses, we lie, we cheat, we back bite, we make fun of others, we bully others, we hurt the people who love us and we do so many things that we can not even list them. We have very little time in our lives which is given to us so that we can please our God by doing good deeds. Good deeds not  only include  praying, but they also include helping others, being honest, following the rules, taking care of old people, taking care of the poor, helping others, etc.

We all aim to be a doctor, engineer, environmentalist, lawyer, G.M,  to be famous, to have a big car and lots and lots of money, but what we do not aim is to be a better person. When we do our daily routine by keeping it in mind that we want to please God and help His creations, then all the work that we do in our daily routine becomes a prayer.

Thinking Environmentally!

As I have told before, I am a student of Environmental Sciences. I chose this field more out of chance than choice. But with time I have started to think environmentally!



So true:-P

This picture shows that I have started thinking like an environmentalist. Really, it's just been 2.3 million years since human life began and look at the damage we have done already. We have intervened with everything. If ethicist say that all our policies are anthropocentric, then yes we are selfish. People throw the rappers in an area without laws for environmental protection, but where there are laws they act like the most civilized people. It was shocking to know that we are eliminating species at the rate of one specie per hour. This rate is alarming. We care about species that are not even known because their extinction can cause problem in evolution processes. Ecosystem has an intricate balance which  needs to be maintained.
We have to think about environment because nature is a gift. We cannot create replicas of nature. Due to ozone layer depletion our atmosphere is having dangerous effects. Global warming is also a very harmful phenomenon. By pollute freshwater we are lessening the 2% available water we have. We have to think before it is too late.
Here are a few things which can protect environment:
1. Every person should plant 1 tree in his or her   life.
2. Water use should be managed properly. Donot waste 2 gallons of water to brush teeth:-p.
3. Electricity should be used sustainably.
4. Food should be used in order to satisfy need rather than wants.
5. Air conditioners should be used at minimum  so that further depletion of ozone layer can be stopped.
5. Detergents should be avoided and eco friendly products should be used.
6. Use of nonrenewable resources such as fossil fuel should be done at minimum.

This blog is the forum where I can put forward whatever I think about life and that is why I love it.
 I came home by flight a couple of days ago. This journey always makes me ponder about the reality of life. When we are in our home, we think that we will never forget it or be confuse about it, but when we go to some other place it becomes very difficult for us to imagine the moments that passed while we were at home. One may imagine them, but when imagined these places look like a dream. Sometimes when I am at some place I try to look at everything very carefully so that I can imagine everything as it is later on without any confusion, but I never succeed to visualize it as a reality and not as a dream. Sometimes I also feel bad about this feeling, but then I think that it is a gift from God Almighty. The reason for calling it a gift is that we cannot live our present without leaving our past. Forgetting leads one to learning something new.
Maybe some of you don't agree with me but this is what I could made out of my experience.