Daily Times

He was only eight years old when told to go and graze buffaloes. He had an innocent face, sparkling eyes, bright mind, sharp nose and tender hands. He would go barefooted with a stick in his hand and an onion in his pocket for his lunch. This practice went almost for many months. In addition, he also used to help his parents in agriculture, livestock rearing, wood-cutting and labour work. His parents were poor and uneducated. Instead of books and pens in his hand, he had axe and spade. This was merely the reflection of poverty he was saddled with.

Out of necessity, he pulled himself away from dark village life into the intriguing city life. While working as a common labourer, a lucky encounter with a social activist helped him get into the state school system. Working part-time, he worked hard and graduated from university. The poor quality of education he received meant that like most poor and marginalised youth in Pakistan, he could not get a reasonable job. Like other youth around him, he was mired in a vicious cycle of nepotism, rising inequality and egocentricity. After graduation, he started wandering hither and thither for survival, knocked the doors of the factionalised elites and so-called politicians, but none was the result rather than rebuff. Because in a country like ours, jobs are sold as products are sold on the market. After all the struggles, he has dedicated himself the work his forefather used to do farming.

This is the story of a poor Pakistani youth representing the current two-third of Pakistan’s population. 32 percent of youth in Pakistan are uneducated with no vocational skills, making this section of society vulnerable to violence and radicalism. Most of the educated youth are leaving this country and serving in the Middle East, Europe, Australia, Canada and the US. According to Youth Development Index (YDI) 2016, out of 183 countries Pakistan stands at 154, India at 133, Syria at 137 and Bangladesh on 147. Worst of all, instead of improving, Pakistan is one of three countries where situation has gotten worse between 2010 and 2015.

Lack of education facilities means that nearly 25 million youth and children (particularly girls) in Pakistan these days do not go to the schools and colleges because of structural poverty. According to Pakistan Education for All Review Report 2015 for youth aged between 15 and 24, literacy rates have amplified over the past decade but at a very low pace principally due to limited budgetary distributions for education and absence of any strong coordination and management mechanism for reaching the most vulnerable groups. These rates rose from 63 percent in 2001/02 to 72 percent by 2012/13, yielding an average annual increase of less than one percent. According to the Labour Force Survey 2014-15, labour participation rate among youth (ages 10-24) is 41.3 percent among males and 16.4 percent among females.

The youth bulge is the future hope for dynamic, tolerant and progressive Pakistani society. Pakistan recently adopted the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and reiterated the commitment to invest in youth as a development strategy. Productive and progressive society can only be driven with this energetic and enthusiastic lot of youth.  Lamentably, youth in Pakistan is stuck in vicious cycle of myriad challenges in the shape of extreme inequality, unemployment, poverty, patriarchal nature of society, political capture, uncertain law and order situation, gender discrimination and inadequate education facilities. Moreover, the educated young womenfolk in our mainstream society are not accepted and are discriminated in all spheres of life.

The future hope of Pakistan is captured in political arena resulting in economic inequality and rising poverty. I regret to say this but we will largely remain uneducated while the elite would send their children to private institutes not only in Pakistan, but in well-reputed universities around the world. They would attain all the luxuries of life without any major obstacles.

Our system depicts the miserable picture of bad governance. Therefore, instead of developing a just and fair society, we are supporting unmerited behaviour. Of such societies, what we can expect is neither great leaders nor intellectuals. For such a bleak situation, we all are responsible and contributing somehow, as whatever is the input so is the output. Today’s Pakistan reflects the impact of what we have been cultivating for decades.

The writer is an Islamabad-based researcher