Exploring the solutions space

I wish there was a behaviour reset button. Something that we could press whenever we saw awful behaviour by our colleagues in politics, media or in general in society and go back in time, just a few seconds before that awful behaviour came on full display. I really wanted to press the button when a journalist told a father during a press conference that his son has died. I wish we could reset that level of indecency and somehow go back to a time where ethics had some or any relevance. A couple of months ago, when another senior journalist asked a young child who had seen her parents brutally murdered in Sahiwal, how she was feeling. A button to reset the behaviour was all I wanted.

I longed for the reset button when the senior most politician in the country resorted to misogyny to describe the young politician from the opposition and when the same young politician made a deeply insensitive remark about suicides. I long for the button every day. The saddest part is that such a button doesn’t exist. We also live in a consequence-free zone. Journalists and politicians continue to say and act in ways that are indecent, vulgar and unethical, and there are no consequences — none.

Since the reset button doesn’t exist, I wonder if we can have the next best thing. A place and forum to discuss and debate real solutions. I have been looking for venues and places where those who are interested in real solutions to the myriad problems of our country talk with decency and real thought. Somewhere where we would go beyond pointing fingers at the previous government(s), and beyond the verbal diarrhea of the TV talk shows.

I have been thinking about such a solution space for some time and explored three different places. I started with online discussions and forums and on social media. This was a disaster. Perhaps I was naïve to even think that social media would enable and foster a robust discussion. I should have known how fast it degenerates into vile personal attacks and inappropriate comments.

The newspapers, magazines, and journals are slightly better because the conversation is largely within the realm of decent discourse. But the emphasis is on analysis, and now ideas are few. The commentary is about what is wrong, rather than with how to fix. Even the discourse on how to fix never really gets debated.

The biggest disappointment came from exploring the third venue, academia. This is my fraternity and I had higher hopes from my colleagues. I was hoping that there would be a more robust, rigorous and insightful discussion about not what ails, but what solutions are there which are cognisant of our unique constraints. My colleagues in public- and private-sector universities tell me that there is some discussion of solutions, but often ad hoc and it rarely reaches the level that is useful for our policymakers.

I recognise that my exposure is limited. Perhaps somewhere there are think tanks and experts who are debating solutions and not just restating that the fault is in our stars. I would love to know where those thinkers and scholars are, and what they are proposing. Not all of our problems are economic in nature. Many have to do with ethics, human dignity, and equity. Where is the honest debate about solving those challenges?

No one party has a monopoly on solutions. We need honest and rigorous solution spaces that focus on the country and its people, not blind loyalty to a party and its leaders. And if that is too hard, maybe we can all look for the reset button.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 21^st, 2019.

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