The inestimable value of education and its capacity to empower the citizenry can hardly be overemphasised.
ISLAMABAD: While visiting different parts of the country, particularly those in my home province of Sindh, I have concluded that apart from extreme poverty, another significant obstacle to the realisation of access to justice in rural areas is the level of illiteracy. It is most unfortunate that the socioeconomic structure of the country has made it impossible for the vast majority of Pakistanis to have access to quality and affordable education.
This problem has been worsened by the current collapse of the public sector educational institutions, including even the large universities where education is now an expensive commodity on sale to anyone who can pay the right price for it.
Yet, the inestimable value of education and its capacity to empower the citizenry can hardly be overemphasised. An educated man will easily adapt to the realities of the situation and have the intellectual capacity to insist on the enforcement of his rights, quite unlike someone who is illiterate. Since education enables the individual break the shackles of ignorance, poverty and disease, the lack of it has serious mental, political and economic implications, which greatly impede access to justice, especially in a country such as Pakistan.
The net result is that, today, a large majority of Pakistanis do not have access to social justice and are alienated from society’s political and economic structures.
Hashim Abro
Published in The Express Tribune, January 20th, 2014.
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