Seventy years is a big time for a nation to firmly stand and stabilise its economy, institutions, education sector, and industries. But in Pakistan, this extremely healthy dialogue has been always crushed by quite a few but very famous answers, on the large extent that includes (1) more than three decades of military rule in the country, (2) limbless democratic governments (3) terrorism that created havoc in the country, and to garnish the terrorism argument it is very important to talk about non-state-actors and the number of similar answers goes on. Every third person talks about these issues, and at the end, it concludes like this: "Whatever happens, only common man and society is suffering."
Political parties are busy blaming each other to make them responsible for the current situation of Pakistan, and its image on global stage. Which is not really nice, to be very honest. I live in Europe and I can see this very well.
In all situations, only common man and the image of Pakistani society is suffering. Elite, bureaucracy, and politicians of Pakistan have nothing to do with suffering that passes through the life of common people. I often wonder why this is happening in Pakistan for a long time, infrastructure is not being developed on the decorous foundation, women empowerment is not there where it should be.
If Pakistan is a democratic country then why people don't get what they deserve? This question somehow shattered me a lot. It took some time to reach the root of the mentioned problems. And here it is, the whole starts with a common person, then small social groups and finally society. We start from a vote by electing wrong people for a different reason, for example, people supporting Imran Khan for his personality, and that makes them blind and there is a lot thrill, music in his political profession that makes him a leader in the eyes of his (blind) followers, this plant of follower-ism has the capacity to ignore Imran Khan’s soft corner for Taliban.
On the other hand, it is useless to talk about PML-N, Jamaat-e-Islami and PPP, they never served but launched ridiculous financial schemes to buy the people to sustain their vote bank. And their followers prefer to act like blinds and deaf for their short-term interests. Development policies are extremely questionable, and those who raise the questions are being made questions, then people ask about them. The abduction of activists is becoming a norm because society has different priorities, society sees everything from social media not from their eyes as they’ve surrendered their eyes.
The youth can spend 10 hours on social networks for trolling, stalking others but they do not prefer to trigger discussions over important national issues. For the youth national issue is to defend Imran Khan or Nawaz Sharif. They will never talk about how people are being radicalised in Pakistani society with every coming day, tolerance is almost gone and in the result, bullets are cheaper than books, and more often people easily get one, for no reason.
The problem lies in our priorities. Social media and internet is for trolling, the latter is being used a medium of connectivity for free long and video calls and source of entertainment only instead of a platform for the rich educational and literary content. All we need is to align our priorities with long-term national interests, that’s one of the very important strategies that must be adapted to regain what we’ve lost as a nation and individuals in the past, and finally one day this will position Pakistan on the place where, love, respect, humanity, and growth will become our identity.
Pakistan Zindabad!
