Work, and let work

We need serious national level therapy, whereby we develop productive mindset of creating and developing things.

At the Ministry of Planning and Development, there is a saying, “he who has no work to do, has a lot of politics to do”. And over the course of a year, I am a witness to the fact that those who are least busy are the most active ones when it comes to office politics, leg pulling and credit scoring, etc. And the problem with the government departments isn’t when you don’t work — nobody bothers about that. The real problem occurs when you actually do work — because then your activity creates a direct threat to people, and hence, any initiative is thereby challenged and shot down. In government departments, taking initiatives is looked down upon.

Unfortunately, it is how we have developed as a nation, and such a mindset exists beyond government departments. If our neighbour buys a new car, we label him as corrupt or a thief. If our friends or our cousins do well in life, we try to malign them and instead of improving ourselves and pacing up to the competition, we try to bring them down either by finding faults or creating hurdles. After all, there are only two ways to compete, either you do better, or you make the other person do worse. We, as a society, choose the latter.

Similar is the story of Pakistani politics, more so since the 2013 general elections. No matter how well the government performs, there are forces out there with a single-point agenda: chaos. Both nationally and internationally, the government’s efforts and progress has been recognised by independent sources. Whether it is Khawaja Saad’s transformation of the railways, Ishaq Dar’s dollar miracle, or Ahsan Iqbal’s efforts, the government is doing an exemplary job that a lot of PTI and PPP parliamentarians accept in private. Then why all the fuss, the talk about toppling the government or the negativity when all the indicators prove otherwise?

It almost appears that those involved in this kind of politics do not want to improve the conditions of this country, at least not during the PML N’s tenure. Perhaps, they fancy taking the country further down before becoming a messiah figure that would change the country forever.

Everyone, old or young, understands well that this is perhaps Pakistan’s last chance to ‘take off’ as a country, and if we miss this moment, reviving our economy and stabilising our country will take several decades. Perhaps we might undergo a balkanisation if we carry forward with this political instability. While the opposition can play a positive role in making sure that the government delivers on its promises, the issues of many opposition party leaders are anti-democratic.

For instance, Imran Khan has chosen to criticise the PML-N, but not on the real issues of education, health or governance reform, since his party is failing on all those issues in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Instead, it has taken up trying to slander the PML-N politically, which hurts the democratic culture in Pakistan — the PML-N mandate. By questioning the mandate, he can delegitimise all the good work and efforts of the current government, something that would perhaps give his political career another day on the ventilator, but will nail the final coffin for Pakistan. It’s unfortunate that Imran Khan has chosen politics over principle, which makes him no different from those politicians he always lashed out at.

The second biggest issue is that of the narrative. Political parties, media outlets and journalists talk about pointless issues that have absolutely no value to consumers except for creating sensationalism. Why can’t we talk about the real issues that exist in our society, that of education, health, civil rights. It is my firm belief that if the media designates an entire month on education, there will be more work done on education in that one month compared to 67 years of Pakistan’s history.

Lastly, we need a serious national level therapy, whereby we develop a productive mindset of creating and developing things instead of bringing down and tearing things apart. Until and unless all the political parties, military, bureaucracy and civil society do not sit together, come to a consensus beyond their petty politics, Pakistan will continue to go through a ‘crisis’.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 28th, 2014.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.