The unprecedented floods have devastated most parts of Pakistan. According to UN reports, 70 percent of the roads and bridges have been washed away; apart from the disappearance or at least a massive destruction of many villages where several houses have collapsed together with the loss of cattle. These floods have also caused heavy damage to various cities of Pakistan disrupting railroad traffic. This is the second blow to the people of Pakistan after the 2005 massive earthquake. But the phenomenon has not brought any change in the mindset of the people. There were reports that water was diverted to safer places in order to protect the agricultural farms of top landlords. Also this was done to safeguard some base at the cost of neighbouring habitats. However, on the basis of ones experience and media reports it can be said that, by and large, the people have shown commendable cooperation by shifting poor villagers or even townsmen to safer places. Similarly, voluntary organisations have offered free services to the needy providing them with food, clothes, medicines and safe drinking water. We have already experienced this cooperation during times of war with India. We mostly cooperate when it comes to the question of our very existence. Otherwise, most of our resources go waste or lie unexploited with the result that poverty remains the basic problem annihilating the majority of the people or at least enervating them. Our political leaders have remained at loggerheads quarrelling over their individual interests. That is why our civilian governments normally fail to serve the country to the best of their ability. In addition, the provinces do not always cooperate on national issues. Most of the reasons advanced for such non-cooperation are fictitious or it is just inability to look beyond one's noses. All these decisions of non-cooperation are based on the questions of ones prestige and socio-political power for creating nuisance. All this results in backwardness and an environment of intellectual vacuity and the resultant darkness in which we live, most of us helplessly. Our national policies are indeed a repetition of the past thinking on the vital issues; most of the retarding factors are due to our mental lethargy; the ruling elite which is sufficiently smug mostly because of their landed property or industrial installations. In Pakistan, it is land that contributes the greatest share to the national revenue but it is only a small fraction of the total yield, most of which is grabbed by the feudal lords. This also applies to the exploitation of labourers engaged in industry and elsewhere in the government organisations. We, as a people, are proud of our past cultural heritage, political power, economic well being and social integration. But we do not adopt measures to acquire the glory ourselves. The reason is that we do not practise in what we pretend we believe. The Holy Quran lays great emphasis on thinking and contemplation, mainly on reason. We achieved the past glory because we followed this golden principle. The Quran repeatedly says that the land belongs to God and also the wealth that the land produces. That man is vice regent of God. But we in our practices deviate from this teaching. Allama lqbal also emphasised this in his poetry: O the tiller of land, this does not belong to you or to your ancestors. However, we do not follow his message though we celebrate his anniversaries most enthusiastically. The trouble is that our beliefs are pseudo which hide our real beliefs and process of thinking. They are not even western, they are only medieval. These were the European modes during the Middle Ages, when we were ruling over most of the world giving them justice based on our moral practices. So the Europeans got out of their shackles influenced as they were by the translation of the Holy Quran and adopted reason and science which has led them to the present heights they have achieved. This produced the famous Renaissance, mainly under the influence of lbn-e-Rushd and lbn-e-Khaldun. Their teaching augmented the efforts of making new scientific discoveries and inventions, as well as reorganising social structures. But subsequently we somehow lost our reason, our science and our culture. We, Muslims, have declined all over the world, though some Muslim countries have made efforts to make our life successful by adopting our own teachings which we have already forgotten. Therefore, no country has really hit the mark so far. Another factor, today, that influences our progress is foreign influence or even dictation, in some cases, or their destruction of a country which has made a real progress according to the modern standards. So the progressive forces have to fight two great forces, our rulers who come from the anachronistic system and foreign friends. Because of our conservatism we were led by the British government in India to dread socialism a new socio-economic measure which was evolved by the European thinkers. Most of them belong to the British, German and Russian intellectual circles, like Robert Owen, Karl Marx and Lenin. These are the varieties of social economy varying from the British Socialism to Marxian Communism. All over the world the major socialist principles have brought justice, both social and economic, for the people of these countries. As a result, most of the imperialism in the world does not rule over the western world but it finds a soft ground in our countries to flourish. Here I may also refer to Allam lqbal, who eulogised this system as being close to the Islamic polity. Therefore, in order to rebuild Pakistan after the present devastation we must apply certain measures to put it on the right track. We have to abolish feudalism altogether to relieve 70 percent of the people of abject slavery. This requires a new land cooperative system that would also generate more wealth than it produces today. This will also enable us to bring real democracy to the country. The budget allocated to education thus has to be increased to spread primary and elementary education in our villages, big or small, the educational infrastructure to be based on primary schools both for male and female children raised progressively to Matriculation level. At least 70 percent of the educational budget should be spent on school education if we want to create an educated conscious public in this country. The proliferation of universities must stop, as most of them particularly in the private sector have been established as a mode of capitalist exploitation. There is an acute shortage of academic staff, who could impart instructions at the post-graduate level or during the last two years of our newly introduced four years BA/BSc courses. To refer to only one of the universities in Punjab, it has announced admission to four of its campuses. One wonders, if one is not seeing a dream or the planners have lost their reason. Moreover, the infrastructure for health services can be established again by opening a network of well equipped dispensaries manned by trained staff with well equipped hospitals at tehsil and district headquarters. This service should serve more or less 90 percent of the people. Apart from these measures drastic reforms have to be made in the field of industry, banking and commerce, as well as manufactories, which produce a lot of wealth. At the same time, our foreign policy should see to it that our produce finds global market. To benefit from this taxation has to be worked out relentlessly, so that the government gets enough money to run various services. The salary structure of the lower and higher jobs has to be revised on rational basis to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor. In addition, to such measures Poor Houses have to be established where the unemployed, old men and women work on community crafts to generate funds for their own expenses, thus making poor houses self-sufficient. Last but not least cultural activities will have to be managed on professional and semi-professional basis to encourage creative activity in arts and sciences. Many more reforms will be necessary once we try to implement what is proposed above. Hopefully, once we start our journey on these lines, we are likely to find a very honourable place among the comity of nations. The writer is a retired professor of GC University.