The future of Pakistan as I see it is incredibly

bright, blindingly bright to be precise. A country

that is on the forefront of every major
international news paper and channel day in
and day out, absorbing every bit of negative
attention and exposure that comes its way has
no choice but to be a big bright ball of Sun that
blinds everyone within a 100,000,000 mile
radius.

The weight of existence of a country balances

on the shoulders of its people; old and young,
rich and poor, corrupt and saintly alike! Luckily
for Pakistan, it rests very safely balanced,
because there is hardly any disparity in the
inadequacy of its people. It doesn't dangerously
tip between republicans and democrats, right-
wings and left-wings - the masses are by and far
the same in essence, greedy, self-serving and
self-destructive!

For the longest time, our youth has grown up

hearing about the uniqueness of Pakistan in
classrooms; arguably the first and only country
to be founded in the name of a religion - Islam.
Perhaps that is the centre of its problems. For a
religion to hold centre place in a country, there
must also be respectable and knowledgeable
religious leaders. In our homeland however, the
religious figures are the shadiest and most
crooked of the lot! The problem is not that I
think state and religion must always be
separate, but that for a people of OUR kind,
religion has become a crutch, being diluted and
polluted with our culture of mindless patriarchy
and rigidity towards change. Religions and
cultures can only be understood and better
assimilated to in a sea of religious and cultural
diversity. It gives better perspective of WHO we
are and WHY we are different and WHY that is
not necessarily good or bad, just different.
Differences are not always divisive and have no
reason to be feared.

Religion may have thrived that way 1000 years

ago but that doesn't seem to be the case
anymore. Religion has become so mainstream
that it is almost too cliched now. We are
Muslims only because we were lucky to be born
to Muslim parents. That is the extent of our
Jihad. Our learning of the religion is painfully
counter-productive. If any of us had the free
CHOICE to pick Islam as a religion in light of
this unfortunate exposure to sub-continental
Islam, I doubt there would be anymore than a
couple of hundred Muslims on this piece of land.
The way it is propagated and preached by our
parents and Qaris at home, and the Muftis live
on TV puts the "Yahoodi Sazishein" to shame.
The Qari of the community is a frustrated
uneducated man who beats the kids senseless
for mistakingly dropping the "Qaida" on the
floor, or missing a verse, while the parents are
busy fighting wars of emotional blackmail,
trying to entice kids to religion with no tools but
guilt and fear - no love, no compassion, just guilt
and fear. Our minorities, the proud owners of the
white in our Flag, also continue to shrink, and
not because they discovered the beauty of
Islam, but because they were forced out of their
beliefs and driven out of their homes and
temples!

We fast not because we have any desire to "feel

the pain of the needy" or "practice
steadfastness" but because restaurants shut
down come daytime. We break our fast with Iftar
Parties at fancy restaurants and thank Allah for
all his bounties like the bread-pudding sitting
waiting on the centre buffet table, while the
prayer room at Maghrib post-Iftar sits empty.
The few of us who do make it to the prayer room
are busy condemning the other lot to Hell for
not joining us in Maghrib and downing the
bread-pudding all by themselves, not leaving us
a single bite!

The actual future of the country however; the

youth, has been left at the peril of failures who
we refer to as "teachers". Respectable teachers
mind you, who have no qualifications backing
them up, grooming our children to be the (weak
and baseless) pillars of society, while they help
assist rigging of votes during local elections in
their spare time. I have personally been a
student of a local MBA qualified teacher who
referred to the anglo-saxons as "the people from
South American countries like Peru and Brazil",
and when he saw the confused look on my face
for the obvious butchery of the world map, he
snapped at me and the entire class for being
poor at Geography. If this is the future of our
education, maybe we should all burn our books
and take a ten year break from life altogether. I
have never heard a sane peer claim they want to
go into the teaching profession, which is
shameful at best when you compare to a
country like Finland where 95% of people who
have stepped into this profession have stayed in
it till retirement. Hard as I try, I cannot see a
Pakistan where it will ever be a career line
surrounded by prestige and respect ever again,
considering the absolute joke we have made of
it.

A complete overhauling of the education system

has been long overdue. The rote-learning driven
local curriculum needs to be thrown out the
window, no questions asked. If the "Gora" O/A-
Level system is all that threatening, then the
Education Ministry needs to buckle up and offer
something that lives up to that competition,
instead of monopolizing the Public Employment
Sector and Medical Profession in favour of
Matriculation students to put the latter at a
disadvantage.

Teens are volunteering to do community work

and charity only to embellish their University
Application forms and social media profiles. The
second generation on the other hand is stuck in
their glorious past of the 60's and 70's when
they could buy half the bazaar in Rs. 100 while
they blame the younger lot for being good-for-
nothing spoilt brats. If the second generation
could just take a step back and reflect on their
own mistakes that led to their failed future,
which just so happens to be the sorry present of
their kids, maybe the current generation could
learn a thing or two from their mistakes and not
repeat history.

Pakistan is also perhaps the only country in the

world that attaches as much shame to their
OWN language as Pakistanis do to Urdu. While
teachers penalize kids for conversing in Urdu
instead of English in classrooms, parents at
home are busy questioning their kids' identity.
"Are you a Muhajir? Why must you speak in
Urdu? Punjabi/Pashto/Balochi/Sindhi is your
identity!" If this disgusting attitude is anything
to go by, then it won't be so far-fetched to
expect Urdu to go down in History and
Linguistic books as "an archaic language that
was once spoken by the not-so-Pakistani
Muhajirs" 20 years down the line!

The generation gap because of a

communication gap is also uncomfortably huge.
We need to stop looking at our offspring as
trophy kids whose only purpose in life is to
stand no less than first in every academic
endeavour and earn gold plaques only to be
hung on our walls. We need to stop questioning
their love for their country and their people at
every step of the way; a desire to travel around
the world is not a direct declaration of hatred
for our own! We need to allow them to make
their own decisions and make their own
mistakes to learn from. And when they do, we
need to be there for them, to help guide them
back onto their feet, not to tear them apart and
say "I told you so!" As parents, we also need to
stop expecting our kids to rule over the world
without leaving the confines of their bedroom,
holding them by a leash and then asking them
to soar to heights is not a reasonable
expectation!

The cherry on the cake has to be our obsession

with politics. It is indeed a sorry state of affairs
if we have not had a national hero since Quad-i-
Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Everyone and their
grandmother wants to be a Politician, because
we all know deep down inside that it is the only
"profession" per say where the mighty position
holders are treated like gods and that's all we
want to be; Rulers who instil fear and dictate
with an iron fist. It also helps that the criteria to
be a Politician is pretty simple, a.k.a there is
none! Any Tom, Dick and Harry is eligible to loot
the country! Nepotism is a given ofcourse! In
the future, I expect it to be made official, a part
of Inheritance Law and Will if you may. "I hereby
leave my Ministry to my two fraudulent sons and
corrupt daughter so that they may suck the
blood of the people dry as they see fit."

Considering our obsession with "fear" and our

"brother China", we should take a book from
their page on their battle against corruption
whereby over 120 high ranking officials and civil
officers were removed from office under
President Xi Jinping's anti-Corruption campaign.
Maybe a page from Singapore on fining their
citizens left and right for minor and major
offences alike would also help, since fear of
monetary penalties and Hell is our only
motivator for anything and everything.

Speaking of China, going by our current social

circle of friendly countries …

If there is to be any hope, we need a complete

180 degree shift in our inherently flawed
attitudes and societal norms. We need to stop
constantly being on the defensive about any and
every criticism that comes our way, from within
or outside our borders. Constructive criticism or
expression of frustration by people, especially
the young, should not automatically be seen as
anti-Pakistani attitude. There is a very fine but
destructive line between Patriotism and
Nationalism! Shopping Malls on every block,
Motorways and Metro-buses that outnumber the
human population are a plenty already, so in
terms of useless infrastructure, I see a pretty
bright future. As for dams and reusable energy
power plants and functional hospitals and
quality education institutions, I saw we better
wait a couple hundred years.

The misfortune of constant debates about the

future is that we forget to INCLUDE the future
into this conversation. The people talking and
making decisions about the next 100 years of
Pakistan are those that probably won't even
survive the next 20 years to see or partake in
that future. So maybe its time to equip the
future, the youth itself, with the means
necessary to shape their lives and that of the
country.

As a nation, we haven't a speck of sincerity and

sense of responsibility left in our veins. We feel
entitled to all good things in life but aren't
willing to put an ounce of effort to get it, only
concerned with our rights, not responsibilities.
I do see an amazing future for Pakistan,
unfortunately however, I don't think any of us
will be around to see it within this lifetime. The
shift all of us seek is in a future light years
away, brought by folks several generations down
the line who will have several lifetimes of
mistakes of their ancestors to fix. Every year, it
feels like we have hit rockbottom but turns out
we are wrong, because when it DOES hit
rockbottom God forbid, we will have nowhere to
go but up!

I sincerely pray for the wrath of God, upon those

who continue to wreak havoc on this country
left and right, and strength and mercy upon
those who continue trying to pick up the pieces
and put it back together!

(Getting rid of a Prime Minister who stutters

while reading off of cue cards on an
international forum like an elementary schooler
would also help!)