IF one is lucky enough to possess a sense of humour (a rare commodity in the Republic of Pakistan which tends to take itself ultra-seriously and is host to a plague of enemies of laughter) one must hang on to it like dear life. Do not let it go. It is a priceless attribute.

This country has just completed two rounds of balloting for our grass-roots representation. The various headlines in our national press are interesting. ‘Violence mars LB polls — 34 dead, scores hurt,’ right next to which was the headline ‘ Polls peaceful, transparent, says CEC.’ ‘Violence mars 2nd round of LB polls — Death toll put between 19 and 29 — Large-scale rigging alleged,’ underneath which was ‘EC calls for reports on poll deaths.’ ‘33 die in violence as curtain falls on polls — Dead include two FC personnel — over 350 injured,’ under which we read ‘LB polls to strengthen political system : PM.’ ‘29 killed in second phase of local elections — PPP says 100 workers injured in poll violence — CEC says 22 killed, no rigging complaints — says voter turnout 60 per cent in Punjab, 40-45 per cent in Sindh and 45 pc in NWFP.’

This was all on Friday, the day after the peaceful polling. Yesterday, a back page headline in this newspaper announced : ‘Killings not poll-related : CEC.’

We must be thankful for editors who have managed to retain their sense of humour.

President Pervez Musharraf, on several occasions, the last being on August 22 in Rawalpindi, has assured his countrymen and women that by 2007, general election year, there will be ‘electricity and clean water for all.’ Until then, perhaps three-thirds of the population of this country will either not have any water at all, or they will have access to non-potable water which will either kill them or make them very very sick indeed. Now, that is humour, but veering towards, to use the old German expression, ‘galgen-humor’.

Foreign Secretary Riaz Muhammad Khan must be praised for his truth, rather than his humour. Under a headline on Saturday, ‘FO top guns under fire at Senate body meeting’, we read that the inestimable Mr Khan had ‘made a startling disclosure in the meeting that the majority of Pakistanis arrested in European countries preferred to remain in jails instead of returning to their country in the hope of a better life there.’

The President and his government are taking seriously the problem of Pakistan’s ‘image’ as it is presented to the world. Advertisements have appeared in our press, and have been picked up by the foreign media, seeking image consultants for the as-yet non-existent ‘Pakistan Image Project’. The job description involves the overturning of the negative perceptions of Pakistan that float around the world. Applicants for the posts of project chief (top slot), and his/her various directors have been asked to submit their visions of how Pakistan can present its ‘soft face’, its ‘enlightened moderation’, etc, etc, to the world at large and thus up its stock in the ‘good’ image game.

This is no mean task and the project is likely to be overrun by shysters on the look out for a quick buck to whom the government will have to dole out much money for ultimate failure.

There is an interesting slide show doing the internet e-mail rounds, all about India, its ‘Truths and Triumphs’. Our large neighbour, with its population of 1.3 billion who speak 325 different languages have available to them 5,600 daily newspapers, 15,000 weeklies and 20,000 periodicals written in 21 languages with a combined circulation of 142 million. Not content with the usual run of the mill models of Hondas, Toyotas, Hyundais, Suzukis and so on which flood the Pakistani market and are unique to it, MG Rover is marketing in India 100,000 Indica cars made by Tata in Europe, and Aston Martin has contracted the prototype of its latest luxury sports car, AM V8 Vantage, to an Indian-based designer and is about to produce the cheapest Aston Martin ever sold.

According to this startling slide show, statistics show that in the US the 1.5 million resident Indians make up 38 per cent of its doctors, 12 per cent of its scientists, 36 per cent of NASA scientists, 34 per cent of Microsoft employees, and 28 per cent of IBM employees. The largest number of foreign students in the US are Indians. Of the US H1-B visas issued 44 per cent go to India, nine per cent to China, five per cent to Britain, and two per cent to Pakistan.

Quite naturally, one slide is dedicated to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and to his quotes. Questioned on what his thoughts were on western civilization, his response was that ‘I think it would be a good idea.’ Another : ‘An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.’ And one of his greatest quotes, to which this country hardly subscribes : ‘The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.’

The other day while passing through Submarine Chowk I spotted a crowd of people gathered round and poking at something. Stopping the car, I saw it was, of all things, a helpless pelican. I asked its minder, who was hanging on to a piece of string tied to one of the unfortunate creature’s legs and who seemed quite happy by the entertainment the bird was providing to the bunch of illiterate and inhumane dolts, what he intended to do with the bird. He was taking it to slaughter it somewhere, crush its bones and flesh, and sell the resulting oil and liquid as medication for various ills to the gullible who would pay him some Rs.600. So much for moral progress in our land of the pure.

To end, on a different note. On the back cover of a book recently published, ‘Pakistan — Between Mosque and Military by Pandit Husain Haqqani (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005) Pandit Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution, like Carnegie, one of Washington’s major ‘think tanks’, is quoted: “ .... This brilliantly researched and written book should be required reading for anyone who wishes to understand this increasingly important state.” Increasingly important it may be for the US and the other leading western powers merely because of its strategic situation, but for much of the world it merely has a nuisance value.

Author Haqqani is described by his publishers as a “visiting scholar in the South Asia project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an associate professor of International Relations at Boston University. He is a former adviser to Pakistani prime ministers Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto......”. Will he please come back and lecture us on the increasing importance of his homeland and its value to the world at large. He has written well.