Self-reliance leads to independence

Are we really independent?  Or are we still on our knees? Such are questions striking people’s minds even today.

Old citizens who believe in unity, faith and discipline say on occasion of the Independence Day they are neither free nor independent in the real sense of the word. “We’re economically dependent on others, politically unprincipled and socially caught in the cobweb of depravity.”

The eyes of poverty-hit people get opened in the wake of colossal loss of life and property caused by rains and floods to the lure of leaders who allegedly never forsake their luxurious ways of life.

“A loaf of bread, or better call it livelihood with dignity and honour, is my basic problem,” says the ordinary citizen. “How should I celebrate the Independence Day cheerfully when I have no shelter and ‘roti’ price has gone up from Rs.2 to Rs.8?” What about fruit, butter and ‘desi ghee paratha’? “That’s beyond my imagination.”

Surge in prices of food items such as sugar pulse, rice, sugar, garlic, ginger and tomato and lemon doubles the worries of the common people who ask where democracy is. One wonders why everybody is talking about unemployment, corruption and bribery.

A businessman or an industrialist may not pick a man’s pocket, but he may overcharge him as much as he likes. In the past, control for the businessman only meant an opportunity to create scarcity and resort to black-marketing to his heart’s content. As a result, the consumer in utter helplessness would say: “It’s better to have things without control than to have control without things”.

The time is long past when we could depend upon the personal righteousness of traders, producers and politicians. Then, what is the need of the hour?  “Ask the man disciplined in uniform,” says the ordinary citizen who is in trouble.

By the way, the Independence Day demands of us to work together wholeheartedly with men engaged in the country’s defence selflessly to turn the homeland into a real welfare state as the architect of Pakistan had envisaged in the light of the teachings of Islam which does not approve of provincialism, ethnicity and sectarianism.

The first and last thing to realise is that self-reliance leads to independence.

zasarwar@hotmail.com