Pakistan as rich a country as any other in the world

Pakistan: A country as rich as any other in the world

Regardless of what everyone says, Pakistan is arguably one of the richest countries in the world. Ever since its birth, the people calling the shots have been looting it. Be it a civilian government or an army dictator, the state’s treasury has always been
treated as if it was the ruler’s own pocket money and thus spent luxuriously by them to make their life seemingly better.

I came to know of this rather elusive truth from a rickshaw driver. During a long journey from university to home, the talkative rickshaw driver went on and on about how hard life had become for him and everyone in the country due to inflation and the failure
of the government to keep it under control. After listening to his grievances for about 10 minutes silently, I pointed out that poverty was one of the main reason why life had become so difficult for everyone and this was something that the government could
not do much about as the people were lazy and looked for short cuts rather than working hard for their living. It was at this moment the rickshaw driver hit me with the shocking statement.

Standing at the Kalma Chowk while waiting for the city’s biggest signal to turn green, he turned back and said, “Sir, I agree that the people in this country are lazy and expect things to happen overnight. However, the leaders are to be blamed as well as
they do not create enough opportunities for these people to take advantage of. Poverty is an issue mainly because the government has failed to come up with an effective policy to reduce it. They all come and simply fill up their own pockets, buy land outside
of Pakistan and then go away. Our country is so rich that leaders have been stealing from the treasury for more than 60 years and yet it is standing continuing to exist.”

For a moment, I was left stunned, a little because of the rickshaw driver’s knowledge and majorly because of his line regarding Pakistan being really rich. What he had said was indeed true. Be it a general or a democratically elected prime-minister, or even
a parliament-elected president, everybody had stolen money from the country. Yet, the country was still managing to survive, still managing to develop, still managing to slowly gain access to the world trade markets, still managing to attract foreign investors,
still managing to give birth to entrepreneurs.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=11803

Posted by Muhammad Qasim Hassan on Feb 5 2012. Filed under Opinion, Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry