草根承载巴基斯坦的希望

Pity the people of Pakistan, trapped between self-serving, complacent elites who preside over a crumbling state, and a rich array of violent extremists who seem determined to tear the same state apart. The extremists promote crisis and the state depends on crisis to persuade people to put vested interests aside, if only for a while.

巴基斯坦的民众值得同情——他们在夹缝中生存，一边是自私自满、统治着这个日渐衰败的国家的精英阶层，另一边是人数众多、似乎执意要让国家分崩离析的暴力极端分子。极端主义者制造危机，政府则借危机来说服民众放弃本应享有的权益，哪怕只是暂时的。

The military, the country’s most meritocratic and efficient institution, is widely regarded as the only force that can break this grim cycle. Yet there are other, largely hidden forces at work in Pakistan that hold it together and offer it a better future: adaptability and resilience, entrepreneurship and shared coping.

军方是巴基斯坦最任人唯贤、最高效的组织，并被普遍看做是唯一能够打破这种恶性循环的势力。但在巴基斯坦还有其他一些力量也在悄悄发挥作用，正是这些力量使巴基斯坦免于分崩离析，并向着更好的方向发展。这些力量就是巴基斯坦民众所具有的应变坚韧、积极进娶共同担当的精神。

These forces can be found in the very new – widespread mobile banking services – and the very old – Islam’s traditions of charity, justice and learning. When government and donors work creatively with these forces, amazing things can happen.

无论是在快速普及的手机银行服务等新兴领域，还是在伊斯兰传统的慈善、司法和教育等领域，都可以看到这些力量的影响。如果巴基斯坦政府和援助机构能够以创新的方式与这些力量合作，将会创造出令人惊讶的成果。

Pakistan has one of the best regulatory environments in the world for microfinance and one of the fastest growing microfinance sectors, with 3m borrowers. It is also one of the most innovative places in the world for mobile banking services, partly due to the State Bank of Pakistan’s moves to encourage the market. About 1.5m customers make about 30m transactions a quarter through their mobiles, using a network of 20,000 agents, mainly local shops, to collect their cash.

巴基斯坦对小额贷款业务的监管环境在全球范围内首屈一指，并且其小额贷款行业的增长速度也极为迅猛，目前贷款人数已经达到了300万人。巴基斯坦在手机银行服务方面的创新能力同样全球领先，部分受益于巴基斯坦国家银行(State Bank of Pakistan)对这一细分市场的鼓励政策。每个季度大约有150万名客户借助移动设备进行3000万次交易，并通过主要由本地商户组成的2万家代理商网络收取现金。

A wave of charitable giving by individuals has helped to ensure that the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by floods in 2010 are not still living in tents. A guerrilla army of more than 100,000 Lady Health Workers, funded by government, has helped to reduce markedly the number of women and babies who die in child birth, according to studies by the World Bank.

大量来自个人的慈善捐款保证了因2010年洪水而流离失所的几十万人不用继续在帐篷中生活。世界银行(World Bank)的研究表示，在巴基斯坦政府的资助下，一支由超过10万名女性健康工作者组成的流动队伍已使在分娩中死亡的产妇和新生儿人数显著降低。

Too many children are still out of school and many government schools are woeful. Yet Pakistani parents go to enormous lengths to give their children, girls and boys, a chance of an education.

大量儿童仍然无学可上，很多公立学校的条件也非常恶劣。但巴基斯坦的家长们仍然竭尽全力地为自己的孩子，无论男女，创造受教育的机会。

Low-cost private sector schools, charging perhaps $2 a week, are booming in slums and villages. Wherever girls receive a secondary level education, small private schools run in the homes of their owners start popping up, as they put their education to use to improve their standing in society. Even the government’s conservative figures suggest that a third of children in Pakistan and half in Karachi, many of them from poor households, attend such schools.

每周收费约2美元的廉价私立学校在贫民窟和村庄中兴起。在女孩可以接受中学教育的地方，有很多人在自己家中开办小型私立学校，女性把办学当成了提升自己的社会地位的一种途径。即便是政府中的保守派人物也建议让巴基斯坦三分之一的儿童以及卡拉奇二分之一的儿童进入此类学校就读，其中很多儿童来自贫困家庭。

The Citizens Foundation, funded entirely by small, anonymous donations, has created almost 900 high-quality schools catering for girls and boys from poorer backgrounds, taught by women teachers trained by the charity.

完全通过小额匿名捐款募资的公民基金会(Citizens Foundation)现已为出身贫苦的男女儿童创办了近900所优质学校，由经过这家慈善机构培训的女教师负责授课。

Indeed, Pakistan has a record in picking up new approaches to learning. The Allama Iqbal university in Islamabad, the first open university outside the UK, is the second largest in the world with 1.8m students. Start-ups such as Tele Taleem, tucked away on a dusty industrial estate on the outskirts of Islamabad, are pioneering ways to take learning to schools in the remoter regions, through satellite links and cheap tablet computers.

巴基斯坦在开拓及运用新的教学模式方面成绩斐然。位于伊斯兰堡的阿拉玛·伊克巴尔(Allama Iqbal)大学是在英国以外地区开设的第一所开放式大学，拥有180万名学生，规模全球第二。而Tele Taleem等初创公司则致力于通过卫星通讯和廉价平板电脑，探索将教育带到更加偏远地区的途径。Tele Taleem目前在伊斯兰堡郊外尘土飞扬的工业区办公。

Donors are playing a vital role in promoting social innovation. The UK’s Department for International Development has pioneered a new road map for school improvement in Punjab, which Sir Michael Barber, the education reform expert, says is delivering one of the world’s fastest improvements in school performance. In Karachi, tens of thousands of poorer families will next year receive vouchers to send their children to low-cost private schools.

外界援助正在促进巴基斯坦社会创新方面发挥重要作用。英国国际发展部(Department for International Development)制定了一项改善旁遮普(Punjab)地区学校教育的路线图。教育改革专家迈克尔·巴伯爵士(Sir Michael Barber)表示，该计划对学校教学质量的提升速度全球领先。卡拉奇的数万个贫困家庭明年将收到代金券，可以凭券将子女送入廉价私立学校就读。

In agriculture, social venture capitalists such as Indus Basin Holdings are leading efforts to link groups of small-scale rice farmers to multinational companies.

在农业领域，Indus Basin Holdings等社会风投机构正在为建立小规模水稻种植户与跨国公司之间的联系发挥引导作用。

Pakistan’s institutions may seem frozen, its elites worried that taking on the extremists will provoke even more violence in the run-up to next year’s elections. Yet, at the grassroots, Pakistan is in perpetual motion, with ceaseless creativity as people find affordable solutions to their basic needs. These largely hidden forces of resilience offer the best hope for the country’s future. In Pakistan, the state may be fragile but society is far stronger than many think.

巴基斯坦的上层建筑或较僵化，精英阶层担心与极端分子硬碰硬可能将在明年选举之前引发更多暴力事件。但巴基斯坦的草根阶层则永远处于发展变化中，为了寻找负担得起的方式来满足自身的基本需求，民众展现出了无穷的创造力。这些隐忍的坚韧力量，是这个国家未来最大的希望所在。巴基斯坦的政府或许脆弱，但其社会组织的坚强程度远远超过很多人的想象。

The writer is a visiting fellow at the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts

本文作者是英国国家科技艺术基金会(National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts)的访问学者。