Inspired by a young American

As a journalism student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I was once assigned to profile a state senator so I left for the state capital one fine afternoon. Shortly after reaching the senator’s office, I started feeling nervous, thanks to the unpleasant experiences of visiting public offices, in the past, in Pakistan.

I was asked to wait for a few minutes so I started arranging my questions, in the order of importance, when a young lady, wearing a lively smile and casual attire — a purple t-shirt, blue jeans and pair of joggers — interrupted me. “Hi, I am Amanda. Please, come in,” she said and guided me to the senator’s room. Assuming she was the senator’s personal assistant, I followed her until she took her chair; that was when I finally realised the lady herself was Senator Amanda McGill.

My curiosity made me question her as to why she was wearing a casual dress. “I will leave for work right after this interview,” McGill said. “… I don’t make enough from this job to meet all my expenses.”

Having served as state senator for Nebraska for over six years, McGill has been working at Target, a large chain of retail stores based in the US, for four years — a rare, if not completely impossible thing in Pakistan. What she said in the interview is probably not relevant to our readers but the very first impression of an American youth, who holds a public office, amazed me most. The youth of a nation can turn around its fortunes, it is said. McGill is one such example, demonstrating why the US is leading the world today.

By contrast, I am utterly disappointed to learn about our youth’s perception of working in the public sector. In my recent visit to the office of the Excise and Taxation Department in Karachi, I found a young man, apparently in his early twenties with a political reference, requesting an excise official to recruit him in a department where he could possibly make money under-the-table.

I come across such examples, of many young men using corrupt means to make quick money, on a regular basis. If this is our youth, one can only see a dark future for this nation. Perhaps, we have left everything to God and are waiting for a miracle. We need to start injecting some ethics into the minds of our youth because God won’t help us unless we help ourselves.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 2^nd, 2013.