So how do we define progress? The issue is an important one for Pakistan which is ranked at 168th place out of 193 countries on the UNDP’s 2025 Human Development Index. Along with Afghanistan, Pakistan is the only South Asian country to finish in this low development category. All the other nations are from sub-Saharan Africa with few resources and few routes to find a way out of the net of poverty and poor development they have found themselves in.
One of the first questions we must answer is what progress is. Too many in the country equate it with turning Pakistan into something resembling Dubai or some other similar city in the world. Indeed, many of Lahore’s picturesque trees with their shade giving branches and cascading flowers have been cut down to make way for the palm tree which offers very little in terms of shade and is not suited to the climate of Pakistan where it has been planted for reasons we all know. And those stretch out along so many of our roads. There are plans to plant more such trees imported from other countries everywhere.
In the same manner we see highways, underpasses, high-rise buildings and housing estates as progress. We see shopping malls with their sparkling interiors and rows of high-end shops as progress too. The same is true of places where people can engage in activities designed for the rich ?? such as cineplexes where for a hefty price it is possible to watch a movie in a cool, sanitised setting. The cinemas of an older time, with guests, with less pristine interiors but cheap tickets offering an opportunity to people from every class group to enjoy some entertainment have all but vanished.
We also do not think of progress in broader terms. Pakistan has the largest number of children anywhere in the world who are out of school and thereby deprived of any opportunity and learning even the poor-quality material taught in our schools. Progress should mean putting these children in schools which offer them education with meaning and purpose in their lives. This is not the way our leaders think. The evidence visible in the allocations for education in the annual budget and the fact that it rises to just above two percent or so, well below the Unesco recommendation of at least 4-10 per cent for education. The same can be said of healthcare and social welfare, with Pakistan falling below almost every other state in the world in this regard.
Yet so many insist that progress can be seen everywhere. They see it in the fast food chains that go up in big cities. They see in the luxury cars people drive, and in the parks designed for the rich which go up in posh neighbourhoods. They simply do not realise that for the country as a whole this is not progress.
At a time when we have seen rains across the country inflict terrible destruction in some locations, we should be asking what progress really means. It means putting in place new waterways where old ones have been blocked off as a result of buildings or the construction of housing complexes and roads over them. The recommendation by an international consultation group – that new canals be dug on the left bank of the river Indus – has been ignored. This means that more floods take place and more people lose lives and livelihoods. The lack of the routes to take away rainwater is a major factor in the disasters we have seen. Yes, climate change is to blame. It will continue to inflate havoc on our part of the world and in other places but it is not the only culprit. Our own lack of thinking and lack of ability to move forward is also a factor.
Progress should mean providing the old peasant who lives along a riverbed a safe house built from solid material and a means to earn a livelihood. This does not happen. Instead every open space of land that we can see is turned into a residential or commercial ‘plot’. This is sold by a real-estate company of one kind or the other. Even inside riverbeds we have attempted to construct houses or they have been taken over by impoverished people who can find no other place to put up their shanty houses and feeble structures to live in and face the wrath of the water which flows down these channels when the rains come in. Indeed, there are some experts who argue that this year’s rains have been no worse than those seen in previous monsoons, but the lack of waterways, the closing off of water channels and the cutting of timber on my hillsides has made things far worse for the people.
Of course, very little thought goes into this problem. Progress then needs to be redefined. It needs to be demoulded and thought out again. That does not mean turning Lahore into either Paris or Dubai. It is unclear why we would wish to convert a beautiful city into something else. It means offering people a real chance to live. It also means putting in the governmental effort to remove the so-called riverside hotels that stand on the banks of rivers in Swat, Kaghan and other places. There can be no harm in moving these hotels back a few kilometres or so that people are not killed when water gushes down a river where they are being fed breakfast right on the banks of the water channel. They could instead have watched the water safely from a patio or terrace built some distance away from the river itself.
The same is true of issuing warnings at the right time. This happens too late and often in any case the government has such little credibility that people pay no heed to warnings or instructions intended to save them. In most cases, these instructions or orders have not come. This can only add to the mystery of people, notably the poor, with the rich safer in their fashionable housing societies often built on land which has been snatched away from the poor leaving them with even less housing options.
The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.
She can be reached at: kamilahyathotmail.com