Are we a failed people?

There can be many arguments over whether or not Pakistan has failed as a state. While there are opinions that this is indeed the case given the economic and political chaos the country is draped in, there are also others who argue that Pakistan has all the potential to climb out of a disaster situation and at the very least equal countries in the neighbourhood such as Bangladesh who are faring better than it as far as exports and economic activities go. It is also true that Pakistan is not yet at the same level as Sudan or other nations who it seems will find it very hard to recover from the disasters they find themselves in.

But this is to some degree beyond the point. The reality is that Pakistan has failed its people and continues to do so. It has failed its people by not offering them education or healthcare and by not ensuring their welfare as citizens of the state. At the present time, Pakistan has one of the very lowest literacy rates in the world. It is well behind other South Asian countries in the immediate region. Why this happened is a long and complex question but is linked to long periods of rule sometimes by autocrats who did not care about people but only their own power and the welfare of the few they wished to patronize. It is also linked to feudal rule and the desire not to educate people in their areas so that they would not make choices when it came to the vote. But people have also failed in all kinds of other ways.

We have indeed failed almost every quarter of society. In villages, farmers have not been provided the technology they need to grow quality wheat and add crops and keep up with the rest of the world. In fact, they might struggle on the best they can. Many of them do but this is not enough in the long run. Pakistan has huge agricultural potential, but if we keep building houses on the land which should be cultivated and developed for farming purposes we will lose this advantage, especially as our population grows.

This indeed is the next question. The population bomb that is about to hit us is perhaps bigger than any other disaster. We simply do not have the resources to cope with population growth of the size that we are seeing and are likely to see in the future. Yet family planning is not encouraged, and people think nothing about giving birth to four, five or six children, regardless of their welfare or the health of the mother for that matter.

The marriage of very young girls adds to the problem. This is something we need to think about and also keep in mind the limited water and food resources now available to us. In the reality that we have not managed to control the population, we are a failure. This is especially true if we compare ourselves to Bangladesh, the population size of which is now lower than that of Pakistan. That, of course, is quite the opposite of the situation when the countries formed the east and west wings of Pakistan.

Of course, there is a great deal else which needs to be discussed and brought on to the record. It is not just education, but also the quality of education that we provide even at the so-called English medium private schools, for which parents pay out fees they can barely afford, that needs to be assessed. In many cases, it is substandard and pupils emerge with very little learning. This is quite in contrast to the Indian Institute of Technology set up in the 1950s from where top companies now recruit their top executives. This is the standard we need to reach and we need to wonder why we have not succeeded in this.

Of course. There are a multitude of other problems. We have major electricity loadshedding exceeding 12 hours in many rural areas from where the voices of people are not heard given the urban focus of TV channels. As we all know, there are many other issues which need to be tackled. We need to tackle domestic violence, we need to check sexual abuse, we need to protect our children, we need to end labour by juveniles. We need to look at our prison system and why it is not succeeding in bringing down crime.

Yes, it will take time to make these assessments, but there are people around the world who already gave a good picture of what some of the key problems are. Research has been conducted on the economy and on much else by persons who we often find fault with. But it is certainly worth hearing the news and considering what we can do to turn our country into a place which cannot be called a state that has already failed or is on the verge of failure. The death of nearly 350 Pakistanis in a sinking boat off the Greek coast is the latest disaster in our history. We need to ask why these people, most of them young men, but also women and children, felt the need to leave their country and their families. It appears that visions of life in Europe and other nations tempted them away.

Again, we must correct the misconceptions of people and also offer them opportunities in their own country. We also know that Pakistanis try to leave the country illegally almost every day. The issue needs to be examined as does the employment situation and the desperate need to offer credit to begin startups which can work and bring funds into households. Unless this happens, we will almost certainly fail completely as a state.

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor. She can be reached at:

kamilahyat@hotmail.com