In about 15 years from today, Pakistan’s population is projected to reach 320 million. That year, 2040, will be the centenary of the adoption of the Lahore Resolution, which led to the creation of Pakistan. Three hundred and twenty million — and counting. We cannot even manage the 240 million we already are.

For now, let’s return to March 2025, when terrorist attacks have increased to alarming levels in two out of four provinces; when scores of security personnel, militants and innocent persons are being killed or injured almost daily; even among many in the non-violent, non-terrorist parts of the population in Balochistan, alienation is evident; when deficient governance and economic pressures on the vast majority are severe.

Is it tenable, in such circumstances, to speculate on the possible role of citizen leadership in turning things around? Well, the worst of times can also be the best of times to ponder because the solution may be waiting where the problem exists — at the grassroots!

Who is responsible?:

Grim current data and grimmer future prospects raise the subject of responsibility. How did we get here? And why are we headed to bleak conditions? Before we search for and find answers, we need to remember that Pakistan’s historical record, be it from 1947 to 1971 or from 1972 to 2025, shows us as a nation-state capable of achievements which are admirable, as well as failures which can be abysmal.

And if we are to look for reasons why and to affix responsibility, one is tempted to paraphrase Cassius from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “The fault lies not in our leaders, but in ourselves”. After all, leaders come from citizens, either through an election (free and fair or manipulated) or forced imposition. Leaders assimilate the mass subconscious and also articulate the expressed views and demands of their people. At the same time, they innovate, identify new possibilities which the public may not have previously voiced, and set new directions.

From earth to sky:

In 2025, and looking ahead to the next 15 years, perhaps there is a need to explore the scope for a new, collective approach to concept formulation, policy-making and decision-making. Instead of a top-down perspective, would it be viable to examine a bottom-up process? Whereby, not just through attending public meetings and voting every few years, the people at large, or at least significant segments of the people, begin to generate new ideas and initiatives — to inject new energy and creativity into the public policy and implementation domain?

At a silent level, in conditions generally adverse for women, females demonstrate an extraordinary capacity for toil, for versatility, and for savings even when earnings are meagre. This is particularly evident among the millions of women who migrate from villages to cities to earn livelihoods. Though on a limited scale, the DHA areas in Karachi, Lahore and other metros witness such women handling multiple part-time jobs, using public transport, or simply walking long distances.

The worst of times can also be the best of times to ponder because the solution may be waiting where the problem exists — at the grassroots. Instead of a top-down approach, can a bottom-up process empower citizens to inject new energy and creativity into public policy and governance?

At this, and at slightly higher levels of income, in both urban areas and peri-urban areas, women manage the rotational money-saving, money-lending micro-community “committee” system. In this, they are their own leaders. In dozens of communities sharing ethnic, linguistic or cultural features, there is solidarity and cohesion, as well as shared support for individuals or families in distress. There are hundreds of community-based healthcare and welfare services that also meet non-community needs for aid, unaffected by unshared ethnic features.

Citizen-led welfare & development:

In formal, registered, organisational terms, some public service, not-for-profit entities are or were led by charismatic individual leaders — Sattar Edhi being the most obvious example. Many others are led and managed by collectives of low-profile or no-profile citizens who provide voluntary services.

This assortment includes LRBT, TCF, Indus Hospitals, Patients’ Aid Foundations at JPMC and NICVD, SOS Children’s Villages, Burns Centres, Koohi Goth Hospital and several others. Then, there are distinctive individuals who lead organisations such as SIUT, Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospitals, Akhuwat, Kaarvan-i-Hayat, Cancer Aid Foundation, and others.

Representing hundreds of citizens who contribute invaluable voluntary time, skills and funds, tens of thousands who support related outreach services, and millions who are their beneficiaries, these citizen-led organisations mirror both the virtually unrivalled generosity of the Pakistani people as donors and philanthropists, as well as their ability to cooperate purposefully, over sustained periods, for the public good. While it is now being acknowledged, this facet of our people is underestimated for the potential it signifies for harnessing citizen engagement in political action for national progress.

There is a view that the reason why citizens are so deeply involved in charity-giving, philanthropy and public service is that these are mostly non-political and non-partisan causes. The theme of this essay, however, is the dire need to enhance citizens’ direct association with political action and change, which can also be divisively partisan. Does that present us with a conundrum? Even if it does, the humble contention is that it is worth trying out.

Unlike the state’s addictive, abominable dependence on foreign aid, foreign loans and grants, the unofficial, privately-led, not-for-profit welfare and development sector draws funding and huge donations from within the country; from the public, rich or middle class or even the poor, as well as spontaneous, continuous giving by overseas Pakistanis. The people have proved their ability to be self-reliant and self-sustaining over many years and decades.

Empathy and engagement:

Another expression of caring for others, of going beyond individual or own-community-centred concerns, is the abundant sharing of food, beverages, water, articles of daily use; cash sums given out during religious festivals and special days such as the Eids, particularly Eid-ul-Azha; mass breaking of the fast during Ramazan with hundreds and thousands being welcomed without discrimination; water sabeels and food during Muharram; and the multi-faith celebration of non-Muslim events such as during Holi, Diwali, Easter, and Christmas.

Though brought together by grievance and anger, protests, marches and rallies — for causes as varied as the forced conversion of non-Muslims to plans to construct canals in Punjab that could imperil water supply to Sindh, or for long overdue salaries, or against state excesses — demonstrate that citizens have the will to come together and risk violence, injury, arrest, and discomfort for shared causes.

While leaders organise many such protests, and some are contrived by them to promote their own interests, by and large people are willing to take to the streets to express their outrage and forcefully register their views and their presence.

Rise of social media:

Instant connectivity through social media, through WhatsApp and other platforms, has introduced an entirely unprecedented instrument for mobilising millions of citizens for a specific purpose or for a precise course of suggested action, without a single or more leaders necessarily taking the initiative or leading the charge.

Every individual with a device is a content creator with instant access to a viewership that can span a few dozen to millions. Disinformation, fake news and misinformation have simultaneously proliferated and complicated this dimension of new, large-scale affiliation. Nevertheless, this avenue offers low- to no-cost means for including citizens in campaigns for advancement.

In the official, reported, regulated economy, Pakistan in 2025 ranks low in the global measure of middle-income and low-income countries. Yet, in the gig economy, ie, the online, freelance, non-9am-to-5pm work regimen, wherein individual talent and a sense of enterprise are key drivers, Pakistan is often estimated to be among the top five in the whole world. This capability is made all the more novel because of erratic, unpredictable access to the internet, especially in recent months, caused mostly by the state’s crude attempts to prevent the spread of critical comments through social media, particularly from sources in the diaspora overseas.

This gig economy, along with the parallel ‘black’ economy, sustains millions of middle- and low-income families. This reflects inherent qualities of innovation, imagination, willingness to work hard, meet deadlines, overcome obstacles and build private resources.

As the state — notwithstanding some remarkable exceptions in almost every province — remains slow in fulfilling its basic duties of delivering social services and infrastructure, the reliance on public-private partnerships in fields such as education, health care, vocational training, etc, manifests the tangible, measurable ways in which citizen involvement in efficient channelling of programmes for mass benefit is already visible and effective.

A treasure-trove of human resources:

Our citizens possess an extensive range of professional skills, experience and competence in diverse disciplines. These include management, production, construction, communication, information technology, mechanisation, air, sea and land transportation, with the additional bonus of exuding a friendly, compassionate, helpful attitude to those in need.

Even illiterate or non-formally educated individuals display intriguing ingenuity and insight. Educated or otherwise, the people are an inexhaustible reservoir of talent, intelligence and creativity — both in conventional spheres of work and in the arts, as in instrumental music and vocal rendition, in folk, contemporary or pop, in writing poetry or fiction, in performing arts of acting on stage and on screen, in painting and sculpture, in shaping intricate textures and patterns, in advertising, and in comedic portrayals that are satirical and humorous.

… And blemishes, too:

Concurrent with such virtues, people’s behaviour also sometimes — not always — shows a moral, ethical decline. There is widespread acceptance of corruption, bribe-giving and bribe-taking, sloth and squalor in public places, traffic indiscipline, showy piety and religiosity, repression of women’s autonomy and rights, extremism and bigotry.

Yet, in this mixed bag of strengths and weaknesses, enormous resources exist that can shape the public good.

The bonanza of youth:

The potential is perhaps most visible in youth, both numerically — with the 18-40 segment being more than half the total population — and productively, as in the constructive ways in which student societies function in various fields in schools, colleges and universities.

Despite the distractions of attention-shrivelling social media, youth often surprise one with the diligence and focus with which they can organise and produce science exhibits, pageants, plays and programmes. Given even limited facilities for training, they excel in activities as varied as football and micro-electronics to elocution. Girls and women often outpace boys and men, with questions and comments made during interactions that can express refreshing scepticism and unexpected deliberation.

Participation in political parties:

Political parties are the most relevant entry points for the future development of citizen leadership. Most of the large parties are family-centred and controlled. Or, as in one case, dominated totally by a persecuted, presently imprisoned leader whose wife seems to play a disconcertingly active role behind the scenes and even in public sight. Parties desperately need — a desperation that they themselves will not acknowledge — larger and more intensive participation of citizens beyond public meetings. If parties are unwilling to enrol new members who want to be members while also questioning the lack of genuine internal party democracy, then youth need to establish new parties which actually practice internal democracy. Equally, existing and new parties should form regular, active research units and internal think tanks.

Such party wings should periodically publish studies and papers on vital issues in society, the economy, and the electoral, judicial, legislative, executive, and military spheres, including defence and geopolitical and geostrategic challenges. There is a tendency to publish manifestos for elections only to fulfil formalities: rarely do parties reflect continuous, scholarship-based scrutiny of dynamic, ongoing changes that require policy adaptation.

Individual leaders are indispensable because they can articulate the views and demands of thousands and millions, but it is high time for such individual leaders to emerge from truly proletarian, collective, participative processes rather than from families — or from cliques alone, or from ominous reliance on the charisma of a single personality. Making voting compulsory, as in over 20 other countries, may be one way forward.

It would also be instructive to study in depth the history of Switzerland to learn some helpful truths about how, in that country, collective, non-charismatic, non-family-centred leadership has evolved and continued for decades to impart stability and strength to a linguistically diverse nation-state that overcame deep poverty. In times when disparities in income, access to education and opportunity for betterment are rife; when outward migration in the recent 2 years has reportedly taken away a million of our educated youth; and when conditions are made worse by a mass-level cynicism about politics and politicians; the question arises as to which socio-economic class of citizen-youth is capable of producing catalytic citizen-led change?

A clue in the last elections:

Perhaps part of the answer lies in the maturity, unfazed determination and cool-headedness with which voters, many of them young, rich, middle class and poor, across all four provinces, came out to vote on February 8, 2024.

Faced with a situation wherein one particular political party had been judicially deprived of its universally-known symbol and unable to use its own name to sponsor candidates, it was the voter who searched for the particular candidate in her/his constituency whose affiliation, known via social media, or word-of-mouth, or otherwise, was with the party that had been discriminated against by powerful state and governmental institutions.

The vote was silently yet eloquently cast for this unfairly victimised party, whatever its many flaws during its rule or after. It was an incredible demonstration of the courage, commitment and character of the Pakistani people. Independent candidates aligned with the de facto ‘banned’ party, forced to use a bizarre variety of election symbols instead of the cricket bat, nevertheless secured more votes than two major parties whose candidates had the advantage of using their long-established symbols.

It is this aspect of the February 8, 2024 general election — the citizenry’s relentless desire to overcome the odds — that most embodies the promise and the prospects for citizen leadership in the future of Pakistan.

The writer is an author and a former senator and federal minister.

Header image: Young Pakistani children wave national flags as they watch the Pakistan Day military parade in Islamabad on March 23, 2016. — AFP/File