A sincere effort

A sincere effort, though questionable.

I really appreciate your effort and all this work to motivate fellow Pakistanis. However I have a few comments to make regarding what is “positive” for Pakistan.

First of all, I don’t understand why so many Pakistanis are all of a sudden so obsessed with “modernization” and all that crap… I mean we are what we are. Why should we change our lifestyles to “project” a positive image on the west. Why should we even care what the world’s perception is about us. Why do we have to follow western world’s standards. Why not set our own unique standards.

I can understand it may help tourism, but we are not some kind of entertainers, who are supposed to create please westerners by giving a hip image.

Frankly I am sick of all this obsession with becoming a modern nation and blah blah blah… because it creates a feeling that we are not a normal society and we have to basically become more urbanized, cultured and capitalist to become the “right” society. In fact I found some of the photos on this site very ridiculous. Lahore is bustling, Karachi is shining… there are restaurants, coffee houses, night life, lights … and we all know very well that underneath all this there is hidden suffering of tens of millions of Pakistanis living on less than a dollar a day.

In my opinion, celebrating all these luxuries enjoyed by selected few of our society is making fun of the misiries of poor. I actually see our society falling further apart in pursuit of all this modernism. Already, people are becoming obsessed with getting a nice car and home, and it seems that the degree of dissatisfaction is fastly rising in our society.

Another comment I want to make is regarding news of Pakistani expats. I simply don’t understand why should we be excited about success of people who dont even live in this country. They are serving a foreign nation and let their contributions be rewarded by their respective countries.

As a suggestion, if you guys really want to do something positive for Pakistan, then create a website which highlights the problems facing poor segments of our society. Which exposes our shameful social sector and corrupt beaurucracy. Something like tehelka.com, i guess. That we would at least be focusing on our real concerns instead of trying to create this goddamn “soft image” in the western world.

Thanks and I hope I offended no one.

Mansoor