Saturday, March 19, 2011

SOCIETY: INSTANT FIX


This article was printed in the Dawn Magazine on the 20th of March 2011


When planning for a year, plant corn. When planning for a decade, plant trees. When planning for life, train and educate people.”
— Ancient Chinese Proverb



A letter written by Mirza Ghalib to a friend in 1861 reads (originally in Persian, here translated):
“These days Maulana Ghalib (God’s mercy be upon him) is in clover. A volume of the Dastaan-i-Amir Hamza has arrived — about 600 pages of it — and a volume of the same size of Bostan-i-Khayal. And there are seventeen bottles of good wine in the pantry. So I read all day and drink all night.”
Had he lived today, would Ghalib have written letters at all, what with the SMS option? What a tragedy it would have been, if Ghalib had taken to SMS, all those gems of correspondence lost to us! Although mind you, Ghalib would probably have been quite happy, a devoted customer of amazon.com, tall hat tipped over one eye, a bottle in one hand, books in the other.
Maybe he would have expressed the above sentiments something like this on his cell phone:
Moi is :) ! Reading da Hmza book 600pgs and Bos Khl same. Have booze and book! lol!!
We’re no longer writing letters, or doing anything else that requires painstaking effort. I was surprised, on returning to Lahore after many years to find that women no longer knit or embroider as they used to. People today have no patience for such things, expecting results as soon as the desire hits. And so we buy our handwork off the rack, and our future generations have lost the pleasure of looking at carefully preserved sweaters or embroidery ‘made by Nani’ or ‘Dadi’.
A fledgling country like Pakistan requires long term planning for its future. Our primary requirement is education, seeing that 37 percent of Pakistan’s population is less than 15 years of age, of which a large proportion, in fact the largest in the world, is out of school, as reported earlier this month. Given this situation, it is horrifying that Pakistan spends over seven times as much on arms as on primary schools, according to a report by Unesco.
The notion that the answer to security issues lies in instant solutions such as threatened or reciprocating violence has been disproved in Pakistan, if ever it needed disproving. The proliferation of arms in our society has resulted in schools being destroyed, people being killed and now a tendency towards a violent response to every issue. The almost glaring answer that only education will lead to genuine prosperity over time, which in turn leads to eventual peace and security is ignored.
The same applies to financial solutions, and to politics. Where money is required, the common solution is to obtain credit. Saving is becoming less common, even in the developed countries. In Pakistan it appears to have gone out of the window at every level, both private and government; lavish marriage ceremonies take place on credit, and lives are led by means of private or credit card loans. That the entire country is supported by foreign loans ought to come as no surprise therefore. It was stated in September last year that Pakistan’s foreign debt stood at close to Rs9 trillion.
Our lifestyle brooks no curtailment of its demands. If things become more expensive, our solution is to print more money, or take more loans. The result of course is inflation. Today the rate of inflation in Pakistan is over 14 per cent.
The only way to real independence for Pakistan is meticulous and farsighted planning for the future and strict limitations on current spending so that our future generations have at least a sporting chance of financial security.
Democratic institutions in Pakistan have also suffered, its institutions are in tatters, while we lament both. However neither democracy nor the institutions can be printed at will like currency. They need to be fostered, and cherished, much like a marriage. The history of Pakistan today is a mess of disastrous engagements with dictatorship and democratic divorces.
We have arms, we live on credit, we print money at random. Quick solutions, instant fix.
Moi is :) ! Have bottle! Having fun! Lol!

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