Problems I wish Pakistan had

We can neither censor all the things that aren’t going right in the country nor just talk about positives all the time

“Decriminalising sex with animals? What’s wrong with this country?” asked an Egyptian taxi driver as he drove me and my friend around a scenic, picture perfect route in Geneva, Switzerland, last year. The radio was tuned into a talk show in French, which we didn’t understand, but the taxi driver self-volunteered to translate. “They’re having a debate about legalising sex with animals,” the infuriated driver shared. “This is what happens when you solve all the problems in a country. People start making up new problems to solve.” We couldn’t help but laugh at the taxi driver’s remarks. For the record, the context to this debate was that decriminalising sex with animals may reduce child molestation.

More recently, a major PR crisis has hit potential US presidential election candidate Hillary Clinton, who is said to have flouted government policies by using her personal email account to answer official emails while she served as secretary of state (our equivalent of foreign minister) during the Obama Administration’s first term in power. While I listened to hours of analysis and breakdown on CNN and Fox News on this “scandal” and “improper use of power”, I couldn’t help but wish Pakistan had a benign problem like this. Imagine a news cycle in Pakistan where the biggest problem of the day is a minister using a personal email account to answer official emails. Sure this is a problem but what a good day it would be for Pakistan when this would be breaking news rather than what actually makes news in the country.

The problem with problems is that they make you lose perspective. And the problem with Pakistan is that we have too many problems forcing us to lose perspective. After the attack on the churches in Lahore earlier this month, someone on Facebook shared that we shouldn’t post “negative news” on social media because it spreads negativity in Pakistan. This is the school of thought that believes media creates negativity in the country and this is at the heart of all our problems. This is an extreme position and earlier in my journalism career, I held the opposite extreme of this viewpoint.

Imagine, for a moment, the absurdity of life in a country where medical professionals are accused of being too ‘negative’, for not giving their patients enough ‘good’ news about their health. Imagine, for a moment, the absurdity of life in a country where heart patients criticise their doctors for focusing on their cholesterol and blood pressure instead of talking about other vitals and organs in their body that are fully-functioning and healthy. Now imagine yourself working as a journalist in Pakistan, constantly being hounded by friends and readers to show the ‘other’ side of Pakistan. The side that isn’t sick or dying but fully functioning in all its mundane glory.

Over time, my position on this issue has swung from one end of the pendulum to the other. Last year, I and a friend started writing a series of articles on extraordinary Pakistanis. The thinking behind this series was as follows: with so many things going wrong in Pakistan, it’s a challenge to understand where to start efforts for a complete turnaround. We would argue that this extraordinary journey can be triggered by restoring the confidence of the Pakistani people. Today, Pakistanis make headlines for all the wrong reasons and the nation has lost confidence in its ability to engineer a turnaround. The time has come to develop an alternative narrative to Pakistan. One of the treatments psychiatrists use to treat patients with low self-esteem is to encourage them to celebrate their own achievements instead of craving external affirmation. Building on this treatment, we dream of a day when Pakistanis replace their messiah/saviour complex with confidence in their own extraordinary ability to take charge of their destiny.

After swinging on both extremes of this issue, it’s clear that the right answer is a need for balance in an unbalanced world. We cannot censor all the things that aren’t going right in the country. Similarly, we can’t just talk about positives all the time. The answer was fairly obvious all along. The question is why we’ve been unable to see it all this time.

Published in The Express Tribune, March  26^th,  2015.

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