The road less travelled

On this Pakistan Day, let us look as much forward as back, and catch a sense of where we might be going

All states evolve, no country or its culture is ever static and Pakistan is as likely – or unlikely in some instances – to change as anywhere else. On this Pakistan Day, a day of celebration, let us look as much forward as back, and catch a sense of where we might be going rather than exhuming the past. It is the job of newspapers and the media generally to take governments to task, upbraid as necessary and apply the necessary censorial and admonitory words that hopefully feed into course-correction. It is equally the job of the media to — but in smaller portions — deliver credit where credit is due. And credit is due.

For all the many deficits and faults that are attendant upon the nation, there is nonetheless a sense, however faint, of renewal. Of positive progress. Of advance rather than retreat. Of winning rather than losing. Of a state that no longer owns the accolade of ‘failed’. There are some fundamental shifts in train, perhaps most noticeably in terms of foreign policy and foreign relations. Pakistan has re-swung the compass, and in respect of India is taking the road less travelled, away from confrontation and towards conciliation, rocks in the road notwithstanding. The transactional relationship with the Arab world is being redefined and today we swing as much eastwards and northerly as we do to the east. Iran and China figure large in our future vision, with trade and investment either on the near horizon or actually ‘in process’.

Domestically, the old giants of poverty, disease and ignorance remain to be vanquished. Education remains underfunded everywhere but there are signs even here of improvement. The population is living longer, a clear indicator that something is going at least better if not exactly right in terms of the physical health of the nation. Poverty is decades away from significant reduction; and some out-of-the-box thinking and a modicum of political courage are going to be needed if that particular giant is ever to fall. Yet taken all together, there is a spring in the national step that was not there three years ago – so ‘onwards and upwards’ as the saying goes.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 23^rd,  2016.

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