Some ideas are cute, “only to be appreciated from a distance”, as one grey haired bureaucrat smilingly quipped last week. Does that also mean that those ideas are not “acute”? Think about it! The world is drastically changing by the day, “like the bubbles on a river: sparkling, bursting, borne away”. Yet it seems that a fog of ignorance and apathy hangs over Pakistan; not only over its public sector but also its private sector, which otherwise pretends to be ahead of the curve.
Outside Pakistan the age of disruptions has long dawned; inside it still seems like the last century. Take the case of textiles, Pakistan’s most valuable offering to the world. While textile businesses are asking for special packages, struggling to export the same old goods to global markets, the world is busy exploring the future of textile. They are talking about 3-D and LED clothing, colour shifting and water proof fabrics, body sensing wool, drug-releasing medical textile to fabric with moisturizer, perfume and anti-aging properties, and the likes.
In ten to fifteen years from now, when the government and the textile barons would finally concoct some success formula to beat competitors from Bangladesh, Vietnam, China (where Xinjiang is rising), etcetera; the world would have moved on. The box standard textile would become irrelevant. Would that be the time when this country’s leading entrepreneurial and policy minds will start playing “catch up”, looking for subsidies, grants, development funding, awareness seminars and what not? Think about it!
Was it not just some fifteen years ago, when people in this country thought that smart phones were just a fad, a luxury? Some went on to say that ‘technology is made by the devil’ or ‘a conspiracy of the west’. Now the same people carry two smart phones. Was it not the case when international quality certifications were being envisioned, Pakistanis thought of it as ‘cute’; today any decent business who wants to gain respect and be able to export runs around getting those certifications, even if merely on paper.
Alternatively, take the case of packaged meat, a growing industry in Pakistan - thanks to the vision of misters so and so. Well here is a reality check: that vision is of the past; last century. The vision now is lab grown meat, which is ironically being popularised as the ‘real meat’ or even ‘clean meat’. Like it or not, but that’s the deal. Countries like Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand are in fact shooting themselves in the foot by investing millions into lab grown meat, and thereby killing their own traditional livestock industry that makes a significant contribution to their national economic output.
Things are moving so fast in that lane that five years from now everybody could be eating lab grown meat. Even if it is to take ten to fifteen years, the future is lab grown, and that packaged meat industry that we have just begun to boast about is what past is made up of.
If that is not revolting enough, consider this: one of the possible future scenarios for meat is eating insect meat with shops selling insect cultivation products for living room and kitchen. Insects have same or ‘better’ protein, and need very less space. Insect meat is not only being devoured in East Asia; it has a growing traction in Scandinavia as well.
Before we know it, there will be environment tax slapped on traditional meat traded in international markets. Why? Because the gasses passed by the livestock are not good for the environment, at least that is how the discourse is growing. Granted that other future scenarios of meat industry include having ‘no meat’, or ‘eat less and local’. But either way, packaged meat exports is a vision of the past. The future has got a mind of its own.
Similar is the case of integrated renewable energy, education, cars (or car-less societies), and so many other things that occupy individual and collective lives. There are many among us who might laugh at these ideas right now, but the gale of tech-led changes is going to laugh back in two decades. By that time, it will be too late to catch up, and this country would continue to be a consumer of technology rather than being its producer.
This is a call to Pakistan’s elite; entrepreneurs and politicians alike. It was the business and landed elite from the Muslim community of the very sub-continent that created Pakistan. They created it because they were under-represented in business chambers, government offices, and legislatures. They created it because they feared they will continue to be under-represented in the future, and thereby remain under a threat for their economic sustenance and identity.
At its heart, therefore, 23 March 1940 was about safeguarding the future; the demand for a new country was a demand for a better future. Today, that future is constantly changing; it is increasingly hyper-globalised and technologically advanced, which demands us to be on our toes. If the people of this country want to have a fair representation in the future, then a major thinking and re-thinking is in order.
If the elite of this country and the people at large want be a part of the future instead of playing ‘catch up’, then the journey on the long and winding road must begin now. This is not a declaration that the future being envisioned by the west must be adopted or necessarily agreed with. But an assertion that if Pakistan does not start thinking about its future somebody else will do that for her; and that is not the sign of freedom.
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