Pakistan: Not a lost cause

EDITORIAL

It is so saddening when on this day of immense rejoicings and gaieties, one has to mix joy with a sense of gloom every year over the past so many years. The gloom is what our founding fathers had visualised of us and what has actually become of us. Jinnah’s Pakistan was to be a place of mutual tolerance, accommodation, understanding and harmony. It was to be the abode of a moderate, forward-looking, egalitarian polity. Instead what has it become needs no elaboration; it is not even a poor parody of the founding fathers’ dream. But not all black it was, always. When Pakistan was in infancy, its citizenry with tremendous fervour and zeal collectively embarked on the gigantic task of nation-building and gave a lie to the doomsayers. From a scratch, state institutions were built into vibrant entities. The public sector and private enterprise teamed up to raise a strong industrial base to a land that had known no manufacturing existence worth the name. Its entrepreneurial class founded a booming services sector. Its hardworking peasantry with its toil and sweat rid the new nation of chronic food shortages and took it to autarky in food and surpluses in food grains and cash crops for exports to earn the country valuable foreign exchange. Not just that. Human development saw remarkable progress, with increased educational and health facilities and social services. And infrastructure saw a massive development in every segment and every field. In short, Pakistan was well on its way to becoming what the founding fathers had dreamt of it. It had gained a name in the world community. It commanded respect in the comity of nations. Globally, it was recognised as a dignified nation. But then in the midstream the nation somehow lost its way and fell on bad times. And the regret is that it is still to recoup its lost gains and reverse the downward slide it is entangled in over the past so many years. The political class blames the praetorian generals. It is their not-infrequent interventions that have brought the nation to such a sorry pass, assert the politicos. The generals blame the political tribe. It is inherent incapability of the political class for which the country is in the throes of difficulties, insist the generals. But the bland fact is that both are responsible in equal measure. Both the praetorian generals and the political clans have betrayed the citizens and let the nation down. And the dismay is that no leader is in sight to pull the nation out of the morass it has slipped into so irretrievably. The nation at this point in time needs imperatively leaders of great vision, wisdom and statesmanship to lead and guide it to the destiny the founding fathers had envisioned for Pakistan. But to its utter misfortune it has the eminences swaggering on the national political landscape that are no tall figures but mere pygmies. They are just chicaners and professional operators who on their tongues have, not the nation’s economic progress or its security, stability and solidarity, but just petty politics. But Pakistan is definitely not at all a lost cause. Its guarantors and the guarantee are those predominantly impoverished, downtrodden and deprived 180 million people, whom the political elites have reduced into mere irrelevancies and redundancies. Yet they have an abiding faith in the destiny of Pakistan. It may have fallen on difficult times. But they have full trust that it will rebound one day and regain its place of dignity and honour in the comity of nations. It is their trust that is sustaining the country in its dire tribulations. It is their trust that is scoffing at the doomsday predictions of this country’s inveterate enemies and the compulsive cynics at home and abroad. And the miracles have not ceased happening, either, even in these times. It is not unimaginable if a real leader with vision does surface from some obscure niche one day to take the rudderless polity to its destined greatness and glory. Gloom, after all, cannot be eternal. It can only be transient and just fleeting. It cannot be darkness for the nation for ever. Sunshine will certainly come to Pakistan, sooner or later. And with this abiding faith in Pakistan’s destiny, we wish our valued readers a very, very happy Independence Day