|
My Research Work
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Research work was, and continues to be for almost twelve years now, one of my main professional accomplishments. Its roots in me were laid from 1985 onwards at the University of Trier, where I earned my Diplom in Business Administration and where the course requirements included writing and presenting seminar papers and group reports. Back in Pakistan after graduation, in Spring 1992, an associate who was managing a consulting firm in Islamabad, advised me to write articles for the Pakistani weekly magazine "The Globe". Back in those days, there was considerable excitement in Pakistan about the Central Asian Republics and Azerbaijan, who had recently become independant following the Soviet Union's disintegration. With the emergence of these Republics, many in Pakistan, including its autocratic leadership, wasted no time to harp on the Muslim identity of these fledgling states in the expectation of grand new opportunities for Pakistani industry and Central Asian support to Pakistan against its traditional nemesis India (off course, like with so many other utopian notions in the past, these grandiose plans soon collapsed under the weight of reality). At first I was somewhat reluctant to start writing but, as Central Asia was the buzzword of the times, I decided to give writing a try and apply my then comparatively nascent research skills to investigate and publicize the potential for economic interaction between Pakistan and these fledgling Republics. At worst I really had nothing to lose except my time and energy, of which I had plenty in those days, and at best, I could make a name for myself. After I joined the Hanns-Seidel Foundation early in 1993, my research on this subject continued, but with a somewhat expanded scope which also included Turkey and Iran als key players. In addition to this, I was encouraged to expand the focus of my research by looking into prospects for expanding economic interaction in South Asia, a vast region of over a billion people encompassing India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldive Islands. These countries are members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. The fundamental underlying concept behind all my research here was "confidence-building" between the region's two key players, India and Pakistan. What this meant - at least in theory - was that expanding economic interaction (trade, investment, energy) between India and Pakistan would reduce the bilateral tensions, which have persevered since the partition of India in August 1947 and climaxed in three wars, and this would in turn result over time in a reduction of defence spending and massive reallocation of productive resources where countries as poor as India and Pakistan should be investing them in the first place, namely, in providing adquate health, housing, water, sanitation, education and employment to their multitudes of destitute citizens. Many bilateral confidence-building initiatives, dubbed "Track-II Diplomacy" were pursued by a number of well-intentioned and reputed individuals from both India and Pakistan in the mid-to-late 1990s, and foreign organizations had lent considerable logistical support for this purpose. In 1993-1997 and 2002 several of my articles on the theme of India-Pakistan "economic confidence-building measures" were published by reputed research organizations - The Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad, where I worked as a Research Fellow, the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington D.C., which advises the US government on policy matters relating to South Asia, the Area Study for Europe at the University of Karachi, with which I coorganized two international seminars in my capacity as the Hanns-Seidel Foundation's Programme Coordinator, and the Foundation for Research on International Environ-ment, National Development and Security, which is a Pakistani non-governmental organization and partner of the Hanns-Seidel Foundation, and with which I also coorganized a number of international conferences, seminars and workshops. My research for the Stimson Center, in which I proposed a common electrical power grid system for India and Pakistan, as well as a comprehensive programme of Indo-Pakistan cooperation in trade, joint ventures and science and technology was, in particular, received with acclaim in policy making circles in the region. Ever since, I have noted demands for such schemes (particularly the energy scheme) to be pursued have appeared several times in the newspaper, schemes which even the US Government has publicly endorsed. With the advent of the new millenium the focus of my research shifted away from economic interaction in Central and Southern Asia and redirected itself towards the field of public administration as I enrolled in the master and subsequently the doctoral programme in public administration at the German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer from Winter Semester 1998. My mentor in Speyer and the supervisor of both my masters and doctoral thesis', Professor Dr. Rainer Pitschas, was keen to learn about the system of public administration in Pakistan, of which I myself admittedly knew very little at the time, but which I took on with my usual committment and untiring investment of time and mental as well as physical energy. I vividly remember sitting alone for hours in the university's basement computer lab in those last dark and cold days of December 1998, when everyone had fled Speyer for the Christmas/New Year holidays, typing away at my research paper entitled "A Historical Review of Elitism in the Federal Bureaucracy of Pakistan and a Critical Analsis of Pakistan's Higher Public Administration" which I first wrote in English and then translated into German for presentation at the class seminar on comparative public administrations in January 1999. It was a very gruelling but ultimately immensely satisfying experience and my research was, with a few modifications, subsequently published in Pakistan in 2002. I had enrolled at the German University of Administrative Sciences in Speyer with a specific field of research interest in mind: Crime Control. I devoted every opportunity to undertake extensive research into this field. I produced the unpublished paper "International Cooperation in Combatting Crime" for another seminar which I attended in the winter semester 1999/2000, and which was my final semester in the masters of public administration programme. It climaxed in writing a thesis of approximately 40-50 pages over the prescribed six week period with the title "Crime Prevention in the European Union with Special Reference to Crime Prevention Measures in the Federal Republic of Germany" The theme was chosen by my soon-to-be main doctoral supervisor, Professor Rainer Pitschas, who was aware of my research interest and supervised my thesis together with another Professor. I commenced my work at the end of January 2000 and it lasted until about mid-March. During this time, my appartment looked as if a cyclone had ripped through it! Books and piles of documents were strewn about on the floor and I worked for the six weeks without a day's rest in between! My daily sleep ration amounted to about 6 hours, down from the 9 hours or so I was traditionally accustomed to. Be assured that writing a scientific thesis in a foreign language (in this case German) can be a daunting challenge indeed, even if the student happens to know the language in question very well which, fortunately, I do. Given the six-week time constraint and the fact that I had to earn at least grade "good" in order to qualify for enrollment in the doctoral programme, I felt under tremendous pressure the entire time! Moreover, each supervising Professor must grade the thesis individually, and the final grade is based on the average of their marks. Then, six weeks after thesis submission, students must attend an oral examination presided over by three Professors, including the main supervisor. I was really stretched to the limit by some of their wierd questions but, ultimately, I qualified the programme with the good grade I needed. And, to my great satisfaction, my thesis was reprinted in its entirety in the German quarterly police magazine "Die Kriminalpolizei" in five parts from the 4th quarter 2000 to the 1st quarter 2002. I enrolled in the doctoral programme in public administration in Summer 2000. By this time I had largely recovered from the enormous physical and mental stress of the master programme. My thesis, on a subject of great significance for practical criminal policing, had as its title "The Application of Information and Communication Technology in Combatting Crime in the Federal Republic of Germany: The Example of the Bundeskriminalamt". Little was I to know that the immense challenge it posed for me - would be profoundly influenced by the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Prior to this event, my primary information sources (the German police agencies) adopted a "cautiously cooperative" behaviour towards me but thereafter, and probably out of apprehension of their "secrets" may fall into the wrong hands if exposed in a publication, they became noticeably reluctant to share data and information with me. Off course, this change in attitude made my work, which because of its nature was already difficult, even more difficult. However, through some innovative methods on my side and use of my contacts in the German police service, as well as my determination to travel hundreds of kilometres to distant towns for interviews with senior police officials, I was able to collect most of the information I needed for producing my thesis. I submitted it to the university on the third anniversary of my enrollment in its doctoral programme which, incidentally, is the last day for submission. The remaining formalities included evaluation of the thesis by my supervisor, Professor Pitschas, and my co-supervisor Professor Dr. Waldemar Schreckenberger, preparing for the mandatory oral examination (Rigorosum), in which my supervisor, co-supervisor and Professor Dieter Duwendaag quizzed me for an hour, and preparing the thesis for publication by a reputed publishing house. Completion of these formalities took another 15 months. Preparing for the Rigorosum and formatting my thesis and its numerous tables and diagrams into a form suitable for publication sure was an exhausting but necessary task. My thesis - the crown of all my research accomplishments - appeared in print in August 2004. It is considered to be the most comprehensive and authoritative public research work on information technology in the German Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt). Other research on the subject tends to focus either on very specific or very general issues. My thesis covers it all and I'm proud that I have stood up to such an awesome challenge! Since the publication of my thesis, and republication of a section of it in a monograph published by my co-supervisor, I have not brought out any new research. My research interest has shifted yet again, this time from crime control to project management, which I teach every semester at the COMSATS Institute of Information Technology. Presently, I am interested in undertaking research on issues relating to project management and total quality management (specifically with reference to Pakistan) in collaboration with major international organizations, such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, and will be making enquiries in this regard soon. When my office schedule permit, my pen will busily get down to work on its next research project again. My more recent research publications can be downloaded as pdf-documents below. I will soon post my earlier essays as well (that is, after I found them. I think they're buried deep in one of several book trunks in my storeroom). Please feel free to download them by clicking on the links. To see the enlarged versions of the publication covers, click on the images.
|
