Daily Times

An academician (intelligentsia, researchers, teachers, sages) and an individual of a society must tend to have an overarching reflection not only on the origin and development of a society through history but to its fate and transformations it is destined for. An academician will have such a reflection because he has a burden of the society on his shoulders to lead the society to the right path and help them survive whereas an individual will only reflect to provide a meaning to his own existence and situation in which he/she is living. Unfortunately, our academic’s (school, college, university collectively) is deprived of stirring such reflexive attitude in an individual that define his destiny and the destiny of the society as a whole. Such a reflexive attitude can mould the destiny in a way that makes the existence of a society and its individual possible. Another aspect that has significant effect on the adversity of the society and its individual/collective consciousness is the burden of this deteriorating political and economic system that is breeding a minority privileged class who is exerting parasitic pressure on the majority unprivileged class. There is a need to define our own fate rather than allowing someone else to determine our survival.

We as a tiny part of this global civilization are near to intellectual, moral and social explosion. This explosion is an effect due to our political and economical turmoil. Politically and economically the majority class is bearing the burden of this system, this failed democratic system in which one minority class is enjoying the privileges and the major class is bearing the weight of their privileges. The measures that has been taken and boasted since as the significant step towards prosperity of the whole nation is only a step towards providing more benefits to the few or the privileged minority class of the country. The void that has been increasing between the two classes day by day causing a possibility of terror and violence. Our society is at the edge of setting loose this terror and violence and in this chaos the minority class will sustain the worst damage.

The so-called middle class of our society is shrinking and dragging towards the lower class. The time is near when there will only be two classes, minority class (privileged) and majority class (unprivileged). Middle class in proportion to the economic burden they are encountering today not only abandoned to be the inspiration that they presumed to be as witnessed by the history in revolutions throughout human civilization, they even abandoned to allowing space to reflect upon their own emotional breakdowns. Emotions are suffering at the cost of economic burden. This shrink is an eventual conclusion which was not anticipated by the pseudo-intelligentsia and which is desired by the genuine-intelligentsia as an inevitable terror that can only reduce this widening gap.

History has validated that only catastrophes like natural calamity, plague, pandemics or bloody revolution are able to reduce this widening gap and inequality between the classes. Before this contraction ceases the presence of our last ambition — last breath of survival in the face of middle class, we must respond by derailing this false democratic system in Pakistan in which democracy is a lost cause and protecting by the aristocratic vultures pretentious of democratic values. Democracy and democratic values tend to provide fair means for every individual to earn his or her livelihood and live a peaceful life where his survival is not threatened at every moment. Where government is not riding on the back of its individual especially when the state completely failed to provide adequate facilities to its individuals. When the state only cares about the profits of the few and where majority class is finding hard to meet both ends. This state is a failed state and if there will be no proper response the chaos will reign.

The author is Lecturer and Researcher at the Department of Philosophy, University of Karachi