A vision of Pakistan in 2047

Karachi
We cannot say with certainty what Pakistan will be like at 100, a milestone it would reach in the year 2047. All one could say is that the present trends will shape the future.
These views were expressed by noted intellectual, former federal minister, and advertising expert Javed Jabbar while addressing students of the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), University of Karachi, on Tuesday afternoon.
Jabbar said that while it was true that global and regional factors effected Pakistan’s future and the way it conducted itself, yet in the final analysis, it is we who remain principally responsible for our future.
Today’s ideals and ideas could be turned into the reality of the future, depending on how we exploited the ample opportunities time had presented us with. “It is up to us; you and me,” he said, “Our aspiration should be to become a stable, well-educated, and peaceful state in which all citizens are secure.”
As usual, he was highly optimistic for the future and taking stock of the present and the past, Jabbar said that Pakistan’s emergence was unprecedented.
It came into existence on the basis of an ideology and was physically truncated with both halves of the country being divided by a thousand miles of enemy territory, yet the people’s passion was so strong that the country came to exist even in those trying circumstances, he stated. Then, he said, came 1971 when Pakistan came to be the first country after World War II to be broken apart. He added that leaving aside Indian antagonism towards the new state, even the neighbouring Muslim state of Afghanistan opposed the independence of Pakistan.
Jabbar went on to say that Pakistanis were a highly resourceful and talented lot. Over an interval of 68 years, we had really developed “Pakistaniyat”, a sense of owning Pakistan and being proud of it.
“Our country was blessed with ample natural resources. Our geo-strategic location was very vital. Pakistan was a country with fascinating diversity, be it its people or its topography. There were barren sandy deserts, verdant plains, sky-piercing mountains, and rivers,” said Jabbar.
“Similarly, there were diverse anthropological groups inhabiting the country. We had unity in diversity.”
However, he said, there were “minuses” in our setup too, which we would have to grapple with to ensure a happy 2047. He listed these minuses as; exclusivism, “mis-education”, weaponisation, violence, and poor governance. Talking of exclusivism, he said that we harboured paranoia about the non-Muslims.
The population growth, he said, was another challenge which was likely to jump to around 275 million by 2047. He said that even in a conservative country like Iran, the use of contraceptives by married couples stood at 82 percent while, in Pakistan, it was just 35 percent.
The population pressures, he stated, would in turn wreak ecological damage and render quality healthcare services more and more difficult to provide.
Besides, he said, we had not become integrated politically which was so obvious from the existence of nationalist groups in various provinces.
He said that certain reforms would have to be ushered in to lessen the burden of things. One of these, he said, was electoral reform and a rethink over the first-past-the-post system of elections. He also called for an end to segmentation and inequality in society and flaws in the education system, especially the classed education system which was different for the stinking rich from the one for the not-so-rich. “Systems in education should be uniform,” said Jabbar. Most of all, he stressed, we had to inculcate critical thinking at the societal level.