Soon we are going to be crushed under our own weight; our population will be unmanageable in a few decades from now on. Some scholars, mostly comprising the religious Right and the Left, still counter such an argument by saying that every human that comes into this world has one mouth and two hands. They usually quote China as an example that has come out of poverty despite a huge population. They, however, forget that China has paid a huge price in terms of loss of human life and suffering in the process under a tightly centralised one-party system. How can one ignore the consequences of the Cultural Revolution and economic policies adopted after the Chinese Revolution? Are we ready for such a politico-economic system? Obviously not because of our own specific historical conditions. Secondly, if one is born with one mouth and two hands what would happen if the mouth wants food and hands are not trained to produce anything productive? Problem is that hands obey the mind’s commands. If the mind is not allowed to develop into a thinking mind, the hands would be little more than contraptions of flesh and bones. And this is precisely what we are faced with at present. We have millions and millions of hands not guided by cerebrum. In other words we have a fast growing population that is not trained to think and thus quite unskilled in a new world that is premised on cerebral activity and skill. Consequently, an increased population doesn’t result in an increased productivity. In this case quantity fails to transform into quality. So we have hordes aimlessly running across our demographic landscapes. Their numbers make them miserable in our post-colonial state that is captured by a predatory local elite whose raison detre is protecting its illegitimate right to extract as much as possible from the people and safeguard its privileges which could even embarrass the erstwhile colonists. The more people there are the less they are cared for. Poet Brecht has vividly portrayed such a situation: “...But here many have been run down, and many pass by and do nothing … Is that because it’s so many who are suffering? Should not one help them all the more because they are many? One helps them less / …The more there are suffering, more natural their sufferings appear / Who wants to prevent the fishes in the sea from getting wet?”

In our ever increasing population pathetic are our young people, who in the official rhetoric are described as the future of our society. They are rudderless as they have no worthwhile jobs because of their large numbers and more so because of their poor education and lack of skills. When we look at the situation objectively we find that young people are not responsible for the dire mess they are in. It’s the state and those who run the state that have failed abysmally to shoulder their responsibilities.

The education system introduced by the colonialists despite its many failings had a secular bent based on a mix of rationality and Western view of life. That system has been dismantled as it did not meet the ideological needs of our post-colonial state. Secondly, it has been replaced by an ill-devised system of education which is based on skewed ideology and narrow view of faith. The ideology is skewed in the sense that its aim is to produce exclusive minds underpinned by a narrow worldview. The West-centric view of life has been replaced by religious dogmatism. Our textbooks offer the most glaring example of what has gone wrong with our education; they offer stuff solely meant to augment a particular ideology that outlandishly distorts the well-established facts and is absolutely incompatible with the objective needs of contemporary life.

Dictator Ziaul Haq, way back in 1970s, defined it with brevity when in one of his pressers replying to a question he had said that Pakistan needed pious people rather than intelligent ones. But piety, a suspect product of our system, is something quite subjective and is not required in a modern world whose linchpin is nothing other than intelligence, knowledge and skills. The emphasis is so much on piety that students who study sciences such as medicine and engineering end up as anti-science. Their use of science is limited to the needs of their professions. In all other matters they abhor employing scientific approach and rational thinking. The arts and humanities taught in our educational institutions produce clerical minds that dream of state jobs which carry the lure of power and privileges. The state seems reluctant to introduce skill-based education. They must be needing a cheap unskilled labour force. The result is that millions of young people holding degrees are jobless as they are useless in the modern specialised job market. Strangely, in their desperation they dream of landing on the shores of the Western countries which put a premium on scientific knowledge, rational thinking and specialised jobs. Scores of them land in trouble or get killed every month in their effort to join the advanced world by hook or by crook. Future prospects for decent life are so uncertain in their own country that they pay agents, human traffickers to be precise, millions to start on the uncharted paths in search of an imagined paradise risking life and limb.

A sizable segment of youth would soon be a political problem for the state and the government as it would throng any charlatan who appears to be a messiah promising the moon. Anybody gifted with some power of imagination and a measure of altruism can understand what kind of future our youth would be condemned to have if we refuse to change our present, which means bringing the population growth rate down and introducing knowledge and skill-based education if we desire to build a modern state that has to be non-ideological and democratic. Course correction would entail pain but it’s going to be much less than what future would inflict on us if we persist to be on the track that has led us to a cul-de-sac. So beware of young people; they are like a wind that can blow in any direction. — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2024