Daily Times

For most of us who were the bystanders of the comical ‘Pakistani Spring’, where we were told that today’s youth had finally taken charge of their destiny, it came as no surprise. The social media where the imaginary Tahrir Square was erected by the overzealous, high on emotion and deficient on details, ultra-patriotic youth, has finally calmed down a bit. Ah yes, Islamabad’s D Chowk, by any stretch of the imagination, does not qualify for a Pakistani Tahrir Square at all. The hero-worshiping and the silly, inane and often downright dumb tweets in praise of a singular person have finally evaporated. But one thing remains very clear: Pakistan is not Egypt and for the last five years or so, it has enjoyed an often ridiculed, seemingly disabled and mostly paralysed democracy. The hyperbole that compared it to Egypt was nothing but hot air. As they say, the heat wave finally ends and the weather cools down. The over-rated and over-inflated youth who were injected to add the so-called missing ingredient in our political scene were actually missing the main ingredient of the political system. The arrogance of the rabbit from the fable of the hare and the turtle perhaps comes to mind. But the topic of discussion here is not the upset or the victory, it is about the role of the youth in the political system.

I strongly and vehemently oppose the infiltration of mainstream political parties into the campuses of our nation. The readers may find my position quite shocking as, on the one hand, I boast about my unyielding spirit of democratic norms and democratic system. Let me clarify. What I find quite offensive is that by such infiltration, we are creating nothing but more of the same. Same old footprint, same old ideas, only new foot soldiers. Hopefully, readers have not taken offence at the title of this write up by now. In short, it creates nothing more than what the title suggests.

Let’s face something very boldly. Do we want people who are going to be worshipping other people as if they are supernatural beings or do we want people who will emerge as real leaders and problem solvers of tomorrow? The oft-repeated line of the need for a role model and a leader is over-rated and highly exaggerated. If we have youth who think that by changing their display profile on Twitter or Facebook and defending a mere mortal human who they claim to be their ‘be-all, end-all’ leader, they are doing this nation a huge patriotic favour, then I humbly disagree. The psyche of people overall and especially the naive youth has been tampered so tragically that unfortunately the people have arrived at a point of no return. Independent thinking and innovation in thinking has been pigeon-holed by party loyalty. I humbly and respectfully disagree with Allama Iqbal’s famous couplet where he is hopeful about the soil (an analogy used towards youth) and alludes to its proper irrigation. He had perhaps not envisioned the flood of nonsense the overflow of this so-called water has created.

It sure sounds ironic and even downright tragic that the leaders of tomorrow learning the fundamental basics to run a society often engage in verbal, physical, and at times, armed scuffles in the name of party loyalties. Yes, the people who are supposed to bring order in society succumb to disorderly conduct with rude and abusive behaviour towards dissent on the internet. When it comes to the real world, the rivalries flourish and poor students waste their precious time on such nonsensical activities. People pulling their strings boast about the power they possess and how swiftly this force can be mobilised to cause any kind of havoc.

Now, what really needs to happen? The students should have engaged in a political process on campuses. However, it should not have any affiliation to any political party, whatsoever that is, registered with the Election Commission of Pakistan. Students should create their parties as part of the political science or humanities curriculum. The parties should elect a working student government and it should only function as a mock government participating in the affairs of the campus. It should be completely non-partisan and never ever receive a single penny’s worth of support from any political outfit or organisation. This is how we will see a culture of people who could potentially present positive ideas, which will eventually enhance creativity and spur independent thinking.

Finally, on the much hyped-up word change. Society as a whole will change when we change our rotten system. With the present system, even those who boast about change, are creating nothing but the perpetuation of the status quo by creating more lettuce heads. Unfortunately, it is too rotten and too useless because these lettuce heads have their brain mortgaged to some decked up leader who is going to take them to nirvana and sing ‘Kumbaya’ for them. We all know that nirvana is somewhere at a stone’s throw from seventh heaven.

The writer is a Pakistani-American mortgage banker. He blogs at http://dasghar.blogspot.com and can be reached at dasghar@aol.com He tweets at http://twitter.com/dasghar