It is extremely heartwarming to read a positive story about Pakistan amid news of constant gun battles, suicides, police brutalities, strikes by different segments of the society, water shortage, traffic congestions, pollution, missing electricity for hours in extremely hot weather. As reported in the New York Times, bunch of kids, or I should say brave individuals decided to take action instead of whining and complaining non-stop about lack of services by the government.
As mentioned by the paper, the students draw their motivation from the recent success of lawyer’s movement in Pakistan when the lawyers forced the government to re-instate the fired Chief Justice. Now, these students have started a social campaign to clean up the garbage from the city of Lahore. Essentially, these students gather on Saturday and clean up the garbage from the city.
This, I must admit is a very noble and sincere effort!!!
Another astonishing angle of this story is the fact that these students started this mini movement on Facebook.
This shows that despite tremendous odds, it is still not too late for Pakistan as a country and as a nation to come together and fix the problems that the country if facing. If only everyone agrees to put aside, at least temporarily to fix the social problems pushing the country deeper and deeper into chaos and mayhem, the tide of perpetual poverty, negativity and the overall sense of doom and gloom can be overturned. And, the country doesn’t need lots of money or instructions from the World Bank or the I.M.F. What is needed is the spirit to taking charge and I have no doubt that the colossal problems that Pakistan faces today would melt away one by one. No, it won’t happen overnight, but the country needs to start and start soon to tackle these issues one by one!
