Stolen words

Those who plagiarise the work of others are viewed with disdain — unless they live and do their thievery in Pakistan.

If there is a single word to strike fear into the heart of any academic, it is ‘plagiarism’ — the stealing of words written by somebody else. Not only is it dishonest, but it undermines the very fabric of higher education by diluting and discrediting academic work. Those who plagiarise the work of others are rightly viewed with contempt and disdain — unless they live, work and do their thievery in Pakistan. Anecdotally, plagiarism is rampant in the country, but there are relatively few instances where it is exposed in an irrefutable manner. One such instance has now been revealed with the publication of a report by a committee constituted by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) and the offender is no lesser person than a former chairperson of the HEC, Javed Laghari, who was found to have plagiarised a European Union (EU) report. He incorporated 30 per cent of the EU report into his own work, as evidenced by the use of plagiarism-detecting software, but he got away with this indiscretion because it was committed four years before the anti-plagiarism policy was formulated in 2007.



Mr Laghari is able to duck under the radar because of a technicality, but that does nothing to absolve him of guilt. To compound matters, he is now among 100 others who are applying for the post of head of the HEC, his tenure having expired on August 27, last year. Mr Laghari is now ducking and diving, claiming that the piece was ‘only an article’ and not a research piece and that all he did was provide data for his co-author who then credited him without his knowledge.

Such disingenuous fatuity serves Mr Laghari poorly. He has been found out and had he been found out earlier, his work would have been debunked and he himself placed beyond the academic pale — or perhaps not, this being Pakistan where accountability and probity are qualities rarely sought or extolled in any walk of life. To appoint Mr Laghari to a post of which he clearly seems to be undeserving would be a travesty, a truism unlikely to prompt him to withdraw his candidacy.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 29^th,  2014.

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