How Can Pakistan Become a Strong Nation?

How can Pakistan become a strong nation? This is a big and important question, and to try answering it is
not an easy task. The very first question that arises in the mind of a person who goes by the rules of logic
is to define what the word strong means here or what it means to be a strong nation. Sure, it means
something or someone not easily challenged or intimidated, but what does it exactly mean in terms of a
nation or collective human spirit? One way to go about defining this strong is to see what the
characteristics of a strong nation or rather of a developed nation or country are. A broad statement
regarding these characteristics would be: Developed countries have virtual access to all the basic
requirements of stable populations and have built up an infrastructure that allows them to satisfy demands
for most common goods, in some cases almost to the point of saturation. We can understand from this
what a strong nation may be like. The key points are: (i) having access to all the basic requirements of
life and (ii) an infrastructure or a system allowing the population to satisfy their demands for most of the
common goods. Hence, nations which are not able to fulfill these requirements reasonably enough cannot
qualify at least for a strong nation.
The question How can Pakistan become a strong nation? itself implies that Pakistan is not a strong
nation. One needs to ask why it is that Pakistan, as a nation, is not able to live up to our two requirements
of a developed country. It is said that since Pakistan is an agricultural country, the area that needs to be
addressed foremost for reformation is its agriculture and people associated with it; to raise their standards
so that it may be more productive. The question is who would do that? In fact, the answer to our big
question lies not at all in stating the main problems of the country and then merely announcing the
antitheses of them. It rather lies in the values of the very organization that is running this country, the
Government. Practically speaking, the power in our country is divided into several political parties
prevailing in each of the provinces. Nevertheless, if we suppose the Federal Government to be the nucleus
of all power, what one would need to do in this case is to fix the values of its officials; to inculcate and
nurture in them the sense of accountability and justice either by force or through some peaceful methods.
This would have to be done by a unison of people strong in their sense of accountability; those who are
persevering and actually live by their values. Historically speaking, this could be done by this same
unison of people by first inculcating their own values of justice and accountability in general public. Then
with a majority on its side or at least a considerable part of the population, it could create an uprising
against the Government or the power, wherever it lies, and force them to either implement their values or
overturn the entire system. The goal is to awaken the sense of accountability in the authority, to bring
those to power who actually are self-accountable so that every department of the government feel
accountable not only to the other departments but to itself too. Once this is done and the power is in the
hands of those who have just the right values, laws could be made or strictly implemented to address
such basic problems as unemployment, racism, tendency toward illiteracy, women rights, etc. These are
the primary issues which give rise to the menaces of corruption and terrorism. Those then who tend to
commit these crimes would have no choice but to surrender to the system or else actually face the strict
consequences. In fact, it is the system that has the power to make it easy for the people to follow law, for
the weak and the strong alike. Hence, with this uniformity in the system and the people, we could actually
live up to those two requirements of a strong nation.
No matter how idealistic these values or methods might sound, the only way around our problem and the
answer to our big question lies along these lines. The end goal is to have revolutionized the essential

values of the people and not just suppress the evil elements. And this starts right from the person who
dreams of seeing Pakistan become a strong nation, to revolutionize his own thought first and actually live
by the right values.