New generation wants change in system

The new generation, like the old one, wants a fruitful change in the current social and economic system which they say has failed to deliver: the common man is still in mental discomfort.

That’s true. Hit by food and fuel price hike, citizens owning small houses six years ago undertook backyard farming to survive without borrowing money from others. Husbands were helped by wives in growing vegetables. But many of them felt the kitchen problem could not yet be solved satisfactorily because cooking oil remained sky-high like sugar and milk.

“How to be self-reliant and self-sufficient is still our parent’s problem,” said the growing children.

The situation has hardly changed in any way. One can say on the basis of interaction with the city youth that most of them are allergic to the manner in which the word ‘change’ or ‘revolution’ is often used by leaders to win ordinary citizens’ favour in their own interest. There are people in towns and villages who predict a ‘bloody revolution,’ which in their sight is the only elixir of social-economic miseries reportedly afflicting the middle and lower segments of society for a long time.

But there are also elders citizens who argue: “We need a change -- a change in our attitude, in our Westernized style of living, and the way we choose our representatives forgetting the lessons of Islam; we abuse them when prices soar and there’s no check on profiteers; why don’t we first subject ourselves to accountability and then raise voice for a change in any exploitative system”.

City elders say there’s need to study the life of the Messenger of God to learn how he conducted the civil and military affairs of the state to the benefit of all the citizens. “And why not think and learn again why the Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah struggled for a people’s government and welfare state?”

Earlier, our society was divided into three segments: upper, middle and lower. The upper one dominated the others in most fields of life. As a result of political up and down, we’re now split into five groups: upper, middle and lower middle, poor and below the poverty line. The main problems we’re facing are disunity, illiteracy, unemployment and poverty in the wake of overpopulation.

— zasarwar@hotmail.com