Future in Pakistan

Though every other day, every event affecting the public and the powerful, every queue at the airport, every desperate effort and struggle for justice and survival, every legal and constitutional tweak, and every other move of powerful circles in the country might be suggestive enough of what and who has and hasn't a future in Pakistan, suggestions sought, or questions asked by aspirants, students and their parents about promising career paths open one to brutal truths and bleaker realities. Over the past few weeks, I have come across many an instance of grim thoughts and realities that are seemingly and increasingly encroaching on the hopes, dreams and efforts of many a person around us.

Recently, a couple of students and their parents connected with me and sought my suggestions on their potential career pursuits in or outside Pakistan. What I have seen and observed in them is gloom, hopelessness, desperation and weariness of the de facto and de jure rulers. Honestly, though not a hard nut to crack, I must confess, I struggled between truth, ground realities and their expectations of getting the right guidance for themselves and their children. I found it hard to suggest a solution, not because solutions are scarce, but because few are worthwhile. If there's anything left, it is either amoral yet more rewarding or morally good yet disappointing in the longer run.

What ways should I have suggested they pursue their careers in? Become a truth-seeking media professional — with intelligence and integrity — only to get branded as a traitor, banned, locked up, or forced to leave the country? Or pursue hard work that gets overwhelmed and defeated by flattery, connections and money? Or embrace honesty, which largely retires one to the gallows or out of the system? Or choose corruption that earns one accolades, positions, power, and the blessed patronage of the powerful? Or should I theoretically recommend that they leave the country and secure their future abroad, as the incumbent rulers implicitly and practically encourage most of the people to do?

Balancing the need for integrity, serving the public and the ground realities has kept me undecided for a while. That is, are the ways that are ideally and morally correct but socially dejected the ones that I should suggest? Or are the ones that are more rewarding for oneself and the system of the powerful but parasitic for the public at large and the country to be proposed?

Suggesting traditionally rewarding acts, regardless of moral imperative, would have amounted to betrayal of moralities and myself. However, recommending morally good acts that are likely to bring desperate career outcomes in the country could have been a deception of their expectations of sound suggestions that they carried when approaching me. Wouldn't it?

In this country, those with proven animosity towards the people and the country, those who betrayed the country, those who committed corruption, and those who should have been made cautionary tales have instead been placed on a pedestal of power and decision-making.

Conversely, the ones who truly deserve honour and respect are made an example of. It is no small wonder, then, that people, particularly the youth, no longer see a future here; they aren't just looking for jobs, they are looking for the exit.

The desperation isn't necessarily due to unprecedented economic and political instability or the incentivisation of corruption and illegalities; also, it isn't necessarily because the ruling lot isn't capable, but mainly because they don't have any intention or plan to steer the country out of the quagmire in the foreseeable future. For the current dispensations, if there's anything worth pursuing, it's the continuation of their grasp on power, resources and people's fate and securing the future of the system and its architects from potential retribution for all their wrongdoings committed against the people and the country.