The biggest problem with Pakistanis, including this scribe, is that we appreciate and admire those nations that have managed to struggle really hard, turn around their destiny and emerge prosperous, but when it comes to learning lessons, we are quick to find refuge in our crises of population explosion, religious differences, dearth of national cohesion and above all, our lack of patriotism—although we continue making verbal declarations as being the most loyal citizens anyone can imagine. Worse still, rather than feeling ashamed at our situation, we obstinately refuse to pay heed to sane voices, avoid overcoming our deficiencies, love making a mockery of wisdom; what to talk of learning from the experience of those who have touched historical landmarks. In the words of Mokokoma Mokhonoma: “We love being mentally strong, but we hate situations that allow us to put our mental strength to good use.”
Unless one is really obstinate or is happily poised in a state of abject ignorance, the act of learning is something human beings consistently indulge in throughout their lives. From the cradle to the grave, we keep on gaining and applying knowledge. We pick up pieces of vital information from our elders, we learn from our children, we grow with our neighbours and colleagues, we find out secrets of life from our teachers and books, provided we are truly serious. Teachers, no matter how qualified or how competent, are bound to fail if their students are unwilling to benefit from their pearls of wisdom. No one has yet been able to physically put knowledge into someone’s mind or forcibly made that someone to understand reason without any effort on their part.
Just like teaching is art, being at the receptive end also requires some element of focus and desire to learn, something that we Pakistanis are gradually weaning ourselves away from, because apparently, we have lost interest in uplifting the country ourselves, mending our ways, learning anything good from others and on the contrary, are highly elated at the idea of foreign lenders or some outsiders who can lead the way to our progress. No wonder it was not difficult for the European colonists to establish themselves in the Indian Subcontinent a couple of centuries back, nor for the forces of neo-colonialism in the form of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to make us victims of the New World Order (conspiracy theory) or the Great Game. Perhaps the obstinacy within our genes overpowers perseverance, making us blind to the idea of self-preservation.
Singapore is oft quoted as a country that rose from being one of the dirtiest regions in the early 1970s to becoming an Asian Tiger today sharing this title with three other nations—Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan. This never happened overnight but over the period between early 1950s to 1990s during which they went through rapid and sustainable industrialization, attaining an annual growth rate of 7 percent.
The 1997 Asian financial crisis taught them to strengthen their current accounts and build up their foreign reserves, measures that enabled them to withstand the 2007-2008 economic crisis that hit the entire world. By restructuring their balance sheets and enhancing surveillance, they managed to make their financial systems more resilient yet the severity of the crisis forced a substantial drop in their GDP growth. Rather than becoming complacent, by end of 2009, these Tigers rapidly rebounded with the support of swift domestic policy on both fiscal and monetary fronts.
Other than being populous with a history of foreign control, these countries have hardly anything common with Pakistan as far as climatic conditions and natural resources are concerned, yet they presently flaunt enviable economic stability, which is nothing more than a dream for Pakistanis today. Surrounded by uncountable blessings, but laced with the curse of unsurmountable debts, the nation is ensnared in a quagmire of defective policies orchestrated by vested interests, bad governance and absence of rule of law. One can easily imagine that had Pakistan been fortunate enough to have far-sighted and sincere governments like that of these Asian Tigers, along with a people willing to sacrifice, persevere and learn, it could have easily attained the status of a super power.
However, a nation that refuses to learn from struggle and success stories of other countries, a nation that takes pride in its obstinacy, a nation that derogates someone who tries to tutor, a nation that arrogantly defies rule of law, a nation that wants everything presented on a platter instead of working hard, a nation that has lost sense of right and wrong, a nation suffering from the malaise of learned helplessness, a nation that is merely waiting for a messiah to redress the evil within, a nation that has turned off its faculty to understand, turning a blind eye to the idea of learning is destined to suffer the way Pakistan is suffering today. Just like the inmates of a house can convert a concrete structure into a home, only a self-respecting nation is capable of turning around the destiny of its country in the same manner as that of the Asian Tigers.
“A nation is great not by its size alone. It is the will, the cohesion, the stamina, the discipline of its people and the quality of their leaders which ensure it an honorable place in history,” ―Lee Kuan Yew, The Wit and Wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew