Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Senate Chairman Mian Raza Rabbani said on Saturday that poor people were the real owners of Pakistan and they should be made stakeholders at all levels of governance.

He was talking to media at the launch of his book ‘Invisible People’.

“Unless this happens, Pakistan will not be able to move forward. Upper classes use and abuse the poor people and do not care about their well-being and their humanity. For them, the lives of the poor do not matter at all. The privileged class does not care about the issues and problems of the downtrodden,” he said.

Rabbani said that his collection of short stories was about the exploited and neglected majority of Pakistan who had no voice and no representation.

“I wrote the book to highlight the class which is invisible. They need to be brought to front.

“They are the real people. They should be the biggest stakeholders in Pakistan. They should be part of the national decision making,” he said.

He said the state did not seem ready to give ownership to the exploited class. “This is a huge issue because the poor people are struggling to find their true identity. As a result, there is a huge disconnect between the real people and the state,” he said.

Published in Daily Times, September 10^th 2017.