[The country’s most famous scientist, Abdul
Qadeer Khan — revered inside Pakistan as the father of the country’s nuclear weapons program and reviled elsewhere as a
notorious figure in the international nuclear black market — gave it his
imprimatur, too. “I have investigated the matter, and there is no fraud
involved,” he told Hamid Mir, a popular television journalist, during a recent
broadcast that sealed Mr. Ahmad’s celebrity.]
By Declan Walsh
The assertion — based on the premise that he had discovered
a way to easily split the oxygen and hydrogen atoms in water molecules with
almost no energy — would, if proven, represent a stunning breakthrough for
physics and a near-magical solution to Pakistan ’s desperate power crisis.
“By the grace of Allah, I have managed to make a formula
that converts less voltage into more energy,” the professed inventor, Agha
Waqar Ahmad, said in a telephone interview. “This invention will solve our
country’s energy crisis and provide jobs to hundreds of thousands of people.”
Established scientists have debunked his spectacular
claims, first made one month ago, saying they violate ironclad laws of physics.
But across Pakistan , where crippling electricity cuts have left millions
drenched in the sweat of a powerless summer, and where there is hunger for
tales of homegrown glory, the shimmering mirage of a “water car” received a
broad and serious embrace.
Federal ministers lauded Mr. Ahmad and his vehicle,
sometimes at cabinet meetings. The stand-in minister for religious affairs,
Khursheed Shah, appeared on television with him and took a ride in his small
Suzuki rental, which was hooked up to a contraption that Mr. Ahmad described as
a “water kit.” Respected talk show hosts suggested he should get state
financing and protection.
The country’s most famous scientist, Abdul
Qadeer Khan — revered inside Pakistan as the father of the country’s nuclear weapons program and reviled elsewhere as a
notorious figure in the international nuclear black market — gave it his
imprimatur, too. “I have investigated the matter, and there is no fraud
involved,” he told Hamid Mir, a popular television journalist, during a recent
broadcast that sealed Mr. Ahmad’s celebrity.
The quest to harness chemical energy from water is a holy
grail of science, offering the tantalizing promise of a world free from
dependence on oil. Groups in other countries, including Japan , the United States and Sri Lanka , have previously made similar claims. They have been
largely ignored.
Not so with Mr. Ahmad, even if he is an unlikely scientific
prodigy. Forty years old and a father of five, he graduated with a degree in
mechanical engineering in 1990 from a small technical college in Khairpur, in
southern Sindh Province
But he sprang up at a moment when Pakistan was intensely aware of its power shortcomings. Violent
riots erupted across Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Provinces recently as temperatures
in some places hovered around 110 degrees amid electricity shortages that
stretched up to 20 hours per day. Chronic shortages of natural gas, which
powers many cars and homes, result in lines snaking from gas stations. Energy
politics are expected to play a prominent role in elections set to take place
within the next 10 months.
In another measure of the issue, the United States
government has donated heavily to electricity generation projects, hoping to
win support from Pakistan’s largely hostile public; last week, Congress authorized $280 million for various hydroelectric projects.
News media commentators said the coverage of Mr. Ahmad’s
claims was the Pakistani version of Britain ’s “silly season,” when journalists and politicians embrace
the unlikely during the annual lull in politics. But for established
scientists, it was a symptom of a wider, more worrisome, ignorance of science.
It shows “how far Pakistan has fallen into the pit of ignorance and self-delusion,” wrote Pervez Hoodbhoy, an outspoken physics professor, in The
Express Tribune, a national English-language daily. He added: “Our leaders are
lost in the dark, fumbling desperately for a miracle; our media is chasing
spectacle, not truth; and our great scientists care more about being important
than about evidence.”
The “water car” is not the first unlikely episode in
Pakistani science. In 2010 Atta ur-Rahman, head of the state higher education
body, aired views that the United States government was financing a covert science project in Alaska that sought to manipulate the world’s weather and that
could set off earthquakes, floods and tsunamis.
Dr. Rahman’s article incited a furious public debate with
other scientists, notably Dr.
Hoodbhoy, who has also sought to highlight a worrisome decline in
academic standards in Pakistan .
Stories of widespread plagiarism, fake qualifications and
doctorates granted under dubious circumstances have circulated in academic
circles for several years. “We have had a flood of academic garbage,” Dr.
Hoodbhoy said. The trend was inadvertently accelerated under the military
ruler, Pervez Musharraf, who required all members of Parliament to hold a
college degree — prompting some to acquire fake ones.
Yet even the country’s academic achievements are mired in
the old problems of politics, prejudice and religion.
The work of a Pakistani particle physicist, Abdus Salam, won him a Nobel Prize along with two others scientists in
1979, and it has been credited with paving the way for the discovery of what
appears to be the Higgs boson particle, which was announced July 4.
But Dr. Salam, who died in 1996, is largely ignored in his
homeland because he was a member of the Ahmadi sect, whose members suffer
state-sponsored discrimination and, in recent years, attacks by violent
extremists.
For his part, Mr. Ahmad brushed off his critics, claiming
to have run the Suzuki for 250 miles on 10 liters of water.
“I am not concerned with theory. I have given a practical
demonstration that a vehicle can run on water,” he said. “What more proof do
these critics need?”
In a word, more. “Water car” jokes have circulated widely
on Twitter, while an Internet comedy group, The Naked Tyrant, rolled out a spoof video featuring a religious man who claimed
to make his car run on “pious deeds.”
And, as a reader of one newspaper noted in a letter to the editor: “What is odd is that the only specimen
so far on display is the one fitted in his own car.”
Salman Masood contributed reporting.
[He said Nepal
was not free even to take decision regarding China .
"As a sovereign nation, Nepal
is not free to open border points in our northern side," he said. He
claimed that if more border points were opened with China ,
Nepal would
have access to abundant opportunities. "Nepal
will be flooded with tourists if we can attract only five percent of Buddhist
tourists visiting Lhasa to
Lumbini," he claimed.]
UCPN (Maoist) Standing Committee
member Krishna Bahadur Mahara said several border crossing with China
in the northern part of Nepal
should be opened and people from the two sides should be allowed to move freely
through those points.
"Nepal
should take the initiative for such concept and China
should support it," Mahara, who also heads the party´s department of
foreign affairs, said at an interaction organized in Kathmandu
by Nepal-China Center
He was of the view that it had
become urgent to take the initiative as people to people contacts between the
two sides in the Himalayan region hadn´t increased due to hindrances along the
borders despite sharing similar culture and traditions.
Mahara also said Nepal
government should take initiative to establish consular offices in some major
Chinese cities where trade and business activities with Nepali side has
increased significantly in the recent years.
"These measures will help
strengthen Nepal-China relations in true sense. This is necessary to end our
lopsided relation," he explained.
Vice-Chairman of newly-formed CPN
(Maoist), C P Gajurel echoed Mahara saying strong measures to this effect had
become urgent to re-establish people-to-people relation between the two
countries. "There was a deep-rooted relation at the people´s level between
Nepal and China
for ages but it has been broken in the recent time," said Gajurel.
While applauding northern
neighbor for "always showing generosity toward Nepal ",
Gajurel said it was Nepal´s weakness for failing to reap the benefits from
China´s prosperity.
"We do not have not a single
dispute in Nepal-China border nor do we have unequal treaties with the northern
neighbor. Conversely, we have at least 50 border disputes with the southern
neighbor," Gajurel said.
He said Nepal
was not free even to take decision regarding China .
"As a sovereign nation, Nepal
is not free to open border points in our northern side," he said. He
claimed that if more border points were opened with China ,
Nepal would
have access to abundant opportunities. "Nepal
will be flooded with tourists if we can attract only five percent of Buddhist
tourists visiting Lhasa to
Lumbini," he claimed.
Also, CPN-UML Chairman Jhalanath
Khanal and Nepali Congress Vice-President Ram Chandra Paudel underscored the
need of exploring business opportunities with China
to reap the benefits from the northern neighbor´s fast economic growth.
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myrepublica.com - a sister publication of Republica national daily.