The least we can do

The doom-mongers abound in our country, and their mushroom growth has gone unbitted, particularly in these testing times: their overpopulation is wrought by fleeting inflation in the country, and space adventures of the neighbouring country. The moot point is whether our worsening plight as a nation is the result of our lethargy and apathy towards paying our duties as a citizen of this country, or the poor governance of state functionaries has created such a milieu wherein everyone has become addicted to passing the buck to whoever is next or near.

With the neighbouring country adventuring in the space, to talk of Pakistan as a failing state has become our favourite pastime, but the irony is that the critic always subtracts himself out of the contents that define Pakistan’s plight. After all, we all are Pakistan: our actions, thoughts, interests and priorities constitute Pakistan. Has any one of us changed our way either of thinking or rendering our duties and services? Have teachers particularly those teaching science subjects reinvigorated themselves that they would do their part by teaching their subjects to rival India in space and technology? The answer perhaps is an emphatic ‘no’. Even at higher echelons no stir was visible.

Social media went abuzz with comparing the Indian space adventures with our installing the largest national flag in Lahore. Where the people at the helm were busy in optics showcasing fake patriotism, the common people started fulminating at the country, without pausing for a single moment to rethink who Pakistan is. Here the least we can do is: if we are teachers, we must teach with a patriotic zeal deeming students as national assets; or if we are laymen, we must use our vote as a national duty without nurturing any vested interest of caste, creed or credo.

Another area that sends these armchair naysayers into the lambasting spree on Pakistan is the failing economy that has brought it on the verge of economic default. The so-called critics voice their homilies against their country that Pakistan is no more a liveable land because of oppressive taxation. But their actions belie their tirade. For instance, some shopping stores play an underhand game and do not give computerised receipt bearing FBR monogram, FBR invoice number and deduction of general sales tax to customers who themselves do not insist on taking the receipt.

Here both the owners and the customers of the store are culpable for not doing their part to make their country viable for them. Are they entitled by any stretch of imagination to complain of the rampant corruption and government negligence? Here the least we can do is not to visit such stores to discourage the malpractice of causing huge loss to national exchequer. Rather, the stores that give computerised receipt must be visited more to sustain their patriotic spirit.

Similarly everyone reels at the humongous rise in the tax and tariff of electricity, and the resultant bloated bills, but electricity theft continues unabated. Not only household consumers adopt malpractices but also commercial consumers bypass the metrics with impunity. Public events whether political or religious (jalsay and mahafil) held in the open are provided electricity illegally directly from the poles. Here the least we can do is not to be involved in electricity theft of any kind, or if we could, we must stop and report such anti-patriotic acts.

To deserve rights, we need to pay our duties first. A country becomes underdeveloped when her people don’t fulfil their own duties to change her fate, rather they like to smug in the hibernating wait for the change to descend upon them. Instead of grumbling at the poor plight of the circumstances, they must do whatever constructive falls in their ambit, not to reckon how much small or unimportant it is. By passing the buck to government to enforce laws, they actually absolve themselves of any responsibility falling on their shoulders being the inhabitants of the land.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 27^th, 2023.

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