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Pakistan’s ability to progress in the coming decades will depend critically on a
proper understanding of the opportunities and challenges offered by the changing
international situation. Three hundred years ago, at the end of eighteenth century,
the “industrial revolution” brought thousands of years of agriculture wealth creation
to an end. The dawn of twenty first century marks the beginning of a new age in
the history of mankind. The old foundations of success are gone. Today, knowledge
is the new basis for development and prosperity.
Today, a new “knowledge and information revolution”
is underway. The paradigms of development is today’s world are changing from muscle
power to brainpower, making investments in human resource development critical for
the success of any society. This revolution is moving societies from national economies
to a global economy posing serious challenges to the future of developing economies.
In order to cope with the new challenges, we need to transform our social, political,
and economic institutions into responsive, innovative, productive and competitive
organizations. PML-government initiated Pakistan Vision 2010 Programme to achieve
this goal, unfortunately it was discontinued after 12 October, 99. After 9/11, misunderstandings
between civilizations are also growing. To build a peaceful world, there is a need
for dialogue between Muslim societies and the West to find just solutions for global
conflicts.
This situation calls us to move forward with vision and speed in order to eradicate
illiteracy and human under-development from out society otherwise the poverty in
our society will grow drastically and challenge the social and economic foundations
of the state. If we didn’t transform our governmental institutions fast enough to
become facilitators of quality services and change, the potential of our society
to move forward will be crushed under the burden of its heavy public sector. If
we didn’t have genuine democracy, our voice will go unheard. Lasting change and
leapfrog jump
can only take place with the ownership and participation of the people.
Therefore, the link between democracy and development is being seen as inevitable
all over the world for progress except our country, where military continues to
see
itself as the sole custodian of the national interests. For coming times, we
need to strengthen democratic and civil structures of the society and make them
effective. The military must become subservient to civil based authority in order
to make
Pakistan a truly democratic society based on the principles of rule of law, social
justice, enterprise and prosperity shared by all without any discrimination. |