Everybody wants a Change, but nobody wants to change themselves
Everyone does corruption. It is so common that nobody in this country wants to change it. We as the rich and the powerful tend to believe that we deserve everything. Even if we catch someone’s corruption, we have a dangling fear that someone will catch us and therefore it is better to remain quiet until a miracle happens. On the other side of the corruption’s coin, are the poor people of this country who shall remain poor indefinitely.
Then in August 2018, Imran Khan’s government surfaced, which paved way for changing people’s perception. People swaying to the IK’s rhetoric, set high expectations of experiencing change within a few days. These were the same group of people who never took pain in the last 70 years, when their rights were being obliterated by corrupt and fraudulent leaders. People, who never bothered to question their previous leadership started evaluating PTI’s performance with a keen eye to find flaws in every step the new government takes. This combined with the opposition leadership and religiously misaligned extremists who left no stone unturned in putting hurdles in the new government’s way. The new government was presented with a versatile set of problems to tackle.
This glimmer of hope in people was because of the PTI’s popular, trademark rhetoric of ‘tabdeeli’ or change, through which it intended to bring change within a few days just like a magic stick. But due to their limited experience, they had no idea about the depth of these problems and the hurdles they’ll face in solving them. It is a difficult task to set onto a new path, and it requires time to get hang of the administrative work, because Pakistan is not a small country. By merely listening to the problems to the individuals and ordering concerned authorities to solve them is not as easy as ABC. There are 4 provinces and 2 autonomous territories, a widely concentrated population of 22 crore and years of exploitation and mismanagement by the previous governments. It takes a while to correct all the messed-up things even for developed countries like UK and USA. New policy makers take time to acquaint themselves with the facts and figures of the country’s economic health and develop new strategies accordingly. Then there is Pakistan, where every new leader gets into a pursuit of making money for themselves, and starts hauling in loans.
On completing 100 days in government, the PTI government petered out all their energies to fulfill public expectations and putting in measures to calm down the opposition. After Imran Khan, the stress was on the Finance Minster, Asad Umer because our country was about to go bankrupt over the Balance of Payment (BOP) crisis, which has now been stabilized by aid received from KSA and China. This labelled Imran Khan for taking U-Turns as always but he justified this measure for the sake of the country which was supported by all his senior leadership. In the months to follow, PTI dissected each and every aspect of the country’s administrative infrastructure which was an uphill task because of massive negligence, corruption and foul-play in all these public and private sector institutions.
PTI has shown dreams to people with their motivational speeches, which makes them believe that the country will stabilize in a few days but that change won’t come when you don’t want to change yourself. Taking the idea of making ‘Naya Pakistan’ forward was quite difficult when people in old Pakistan didn’t want to change. But despite the criticism, the PTI government still took the plunge and presented their 100 days performance in such an impressive way that it gives them an additional hard-hitting contest and to the people another hope that in these 5 years, Pakistan will turn out to be a developed country. But the irony of the matter still remains that if we all want a change, but we don’t want to change ourselves.