The other side of fear

Children are dying of rabies or mad dog disease in the upper districts of Sindh, writhing with agony in the laps of their mothers. But we do not have the medicine to treat them.

While the civilized world vaccinates all their dogs against rabies, we kill them. When children are dying of rabies, what do we expect for the dogs?

We import most things at costs higher than the actual costs incurred, in import duty and other taxes. We do not produce most of the things because we do not believe in experiments or trial and error.

The result is all the money going down the drain in the name of research and development at higher educational institutions such as universities, and the country getting zero percent value addition in terms of inventions.

Talking of inventions is a far cry, we cannot even copy other countries in making solar panels, even the lota and mug for our bathrooms are imported from China. What kind of rocket science is involved in copying solar panels, medicines and other products? Why must we import everything from the entire world?

Since we cannot risk failing, we do not venture into unseen scenarios of experiments, we do only what is hundred percent certain, helping other people earn from our work, while we get a fixed salary on a monthly basis.

We cannot leave everything our children need to learn at the mercy of schools. Successful children do not come out of great schools and educational institutions, they rather come from the motivation, support and counselling provided to them by their parents at home. The thing of utmost importance would be to teach them action. To fail and get back up again. To risk and fail again. Lest we get rid of the fear of failing, we should not hope for any good for ourselves or for this country.

The world over children are raised with the idea of going to the best school, college and university to be able to land into a dream job with a great company or corporation and get into the maze of settling down. Children learn accounting and business management so that they may increase profit for other people’s businesses not to be their own bosses and earn for themselves. This happens because we ourselves are afraid to fail and take risk. Children do not hear the words we say, they look at the actions and concerns of elders.

During these days of lethargic politicking, all we want to do is express our objections on social media, criticize anyone but ourselves and then sit back and see what the world has to say and do. Inaction and a sense of insecurity is the plague of our time, harming adults and children alike. In the urban setting, under ordinary circumstances both parents are working and when they are home, they do not want a new day to begin. Hence, television and gadgets come handy to soothe the demands of children, who have missed their parents the whole day at school or at the day-care or with the nannies.

Some good universities have blind admission policies, which means that if you qualify the pre-entry examination but you cannot afford the fee, the university will arrange scholarship for you.

Universities have incubation centres for students so that they may think free and distil their ideas well before leaving the university. This facility is provided so that students may start their own businesses, rather than looking for jobs after graduating. The current government has programmes in the pipe-line for encouraging startups, by giving a soft loan of up to a million Pak rupees.

The young people of Pakistan should plan and act without worrying about outcomes. They should only consider the sky as the limit, nothing below should scare them. George Addair is quoted as saying: “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.”

The writer is a developmentalprofessional.

Email: neetushah@gmail.com