DENIZENS OF ALIEN WORLDS

65
(17,987,396)
Hassanabdal 48,223,000 1350 12.75% 480 100,465
(6,148,433)
Mastung 36,300,000 2200 15.75% 360 100834
(5,500,000)
Source: Offices of the respective institutions except for the cost per student per year
which was obtained by dividing the total budget by the number of students.
For details see Annexure-5.
It is because of this that, while cadet colleges have excellent boarding and lodging
arrangements, spacious playgrounds, well equipped libraries, laboratories and faculty
with masters‘ degrees, the ordinary Urdu-medium (and Sindhi-medium) schools
sometimes do not even have benches for pupils to sit on. In short, contrary to its stated
policy of spending public funds on giving the same type of schooling to all, the state (and
its institutions) actually spend more funds on privileged children for a privileged
(English-medium) form of schooling. This perpetuates the socio-economic inequalities
which have always existed in Pakistani society.
The textbooks of Cadet College are in English but they are mostly from the
Textbook Boards. Their teachers, generally from the middle classes, also expose them to
anti-India, pro-military ideas. Moreover, as most students are boarders they are not
exposed to cable TV as their elitist school counterparts are.
Boys in the cadet colleges belong to middle class backgrounds (56.90%---see
Annexure-1 for details).
They are used to some regimentation in their schools. Like the students of other
English-medium schools, they are also supportive of less militant and intolerant policies
than their counterparts in the madrassas. However, possibly because of regimentation
and closeness to the military in some cases, they are somewhat more aggressive and
intolerant towards the religious minorities and women than the students of elitist Englishmedium
schools.
Box 4.9