Blocking the WAY

After the successful Arab spring the world has started giving attention to the youth movement and hoping them to serve as Agent of change for the better future of the country in particular and global peace in general. This mind shift has also influence Pakistani youth and inspires them to play an active role for the country development. In the meantime the decades OLD political lords have also revised their strategy to neutralize the ongoing political rivals and keep the moment alive for the ruling elites till their last breath.

Currently we as nation are passing through very critical moment at one side US are dragging us the quagmire of the “War on Terror” and other side due to the incompetent leadership we are losing every front at national and international level. Politicians are trying with all their means and ways to restrict the national political game to the “certain class” of the society which is in power since British Empire. They are using different institutional and customary hurdles to stop the rise of young generation to the mainstream politics and also deliberately trying to stop the flow of middle class workers to the top slots.

• Higher Education: At the beginning of this millennium Dr. Atta-ur-Rehman initiated Higher Education Commission Scholarships programme which unable thousands students to be enrolled for Doctoral research in leading university of the country and abroad. This programme brings rapid change to the dysfunctional university education system and supplied a new blood of researchers and academics excellence to strive for better future. When Peoples Democracy was restored in 2008 HEC suffers a serious blow; funds has been reduced and adding more the tragedy government politicize the prestigious institution to get approval for the FAKE degrees holder of the National Parliaments.

Socially this fund dry up has meant a lot for the middle class as they suffer a lot with this awful decision as it was the middle class students who were mostly benefited for getting prestigious scholarships and admission in world top class universities. Continuity of the programme with this pace was meant that after couple of decades it will be middle class to rule the bureaucracy and institutions of Pakistan which can’t be tolerated by the ruling elite class.

Unfortunately soon after independence my country was thrown into class system and certain measure was taken up to enable entry of elite class ONLY to specific jobs like politics, bureaucracy, military etc.

The already established Class system for education was further more strengthened by the political figures and businessman to create the conditions they want to rule them country.

It’s only what is happening at Higher Education institutions if we look downwards to the college and schools it’s very hard to believe that we are living in the “Islamic Republic of Pakistan”. According to the Government source (which always remains doubtful) we are having 48% literacy rate while independent sources limit it to 30% still statistics shows for every 60 students we are having only one teacher which clearly shows how we are interested in spreading education.

• Student Unions: In recent political figures of the country almost 60% leaders are emerged from the Students Unions which serve as nursery for them to groom and take the responsibility of the country future. Unfortunately under the military rule of President ZIA in 1980’s students politics were banned and still this decision is in place even passed through three mixed decades of controlled democracy and military rule. These unions were the first place for the students to nurture their skills and leadership qualities and start believing that |Yes we can|. After being declared illegal to be active in politics at educational institutions regional and ethnic groups surface which pushed the society more towards the radical lines of separations.

In response to the absence of proper student’s inclusion in the advisory and decision making bodies the teachers unions and politics has emerged with all its negative values. Now being a student of semester system in the university or college you are just captive to the wishes of teacher community and that’s the reason the black sheep’s presented in the honorable teachers community are earning a bad name for all their colleagues.

In the absence of these types of “practical academies” it’s very difficult to prepare the next cadres of leaderships as we have witnessed within our history that now-a-days most of the leaders are introduced through hereditary connections. This has also slow down the “political participation” process as most of the peoples are not interested in the politics and consider it as “play game” of the elite and ruling class.

• Unemployment: The ongoing economic degradation has also put a questions mark on youth community to be active in mainstream political and developmental life. Every passing day bring news of price hikes and unemployment to the Nation which is really disturbing the calculated life of the middle class community. According to the recent news reports more than 40% peoples are living under poverty line in the country and the number is increasing with full speed due to lack of proper counter strategy.

These are only the few reasons hindering the entry of Youths in the development of country life but still we have high hopes from them as we can see despite all the impotency at political or leadership front we are having brilliant minds in our youth ranks. Every youth has his own vision and agenda for bringing change but the need is to unite them all and provide them platform to lead from the font.

Youth needs to realize that future belongs to them so they are responsible for shaping it if they adopt the policy of wait and see nothing will be changed in their favor.