Essays

Poverty in Pakistan

Pakistan is world’s 6th largest country in terms of population and its population is mostly rural. The rural population of Pakistan is totally depending on agriculture. As in most cases where the canal system is lacking or on arid lands, the production of food is limited as agriculture is said to be subsistence and meager to provide extra costs associated to quality of life. The quality of life is the measure of development, the more the development, the better the quality of life. A better life means, better education, health and sanitation facilities and better future associated for young population.

The rural areas are relatively poor with respect to urban areas and about 33 percent of the population is living below poverty line. The determination of poverty line in Pakistan to measure absolute poverty is differing from rest of world. There are several techniques to measure the poverty and in Pakistan, poverty line is measured according to caloric intake technique according to which about 25000 kilo calories are required for a single individual to be out of poverty.

There are many developments initiatives in order to reduce or contain poverty. Non-state actors like United Nations have designed interventions all over the world and in Pakistan for poverty reduction. Human Development Index, which is calculated annually for all developed and developing countries in order to know the extent of their well-being of human life, was first proposed by a Pakistani social scientist, Mr. Mehboob-ul-Haq when he was working in UNDP. Since then, Human Development Index is calculated all over the world.

My Aim in Life

Human being has been given some specific attributes which other creatures have not been given by Almighty Allah and at same time, the responsibilities are also allocated to human beings. After getting particular education, a human being has to set a specific aim in order to achieve success in life. The success in life is only possible when one is focusing on aim or goal of life. The aim could be to become a professional doctor, for example, or to become a engineer, to become social scientists or dentist. So aims are diverse and their selection is based on an individual’s appetite.

My aim in life is to become a renowned social scientist. Socio-economic development is core to nations’ development. First to attain my aim, I have planned to get quality education leading me to particular specialization like degree of Philosophy in sociology or economics or social work.

My reason to strive for this aim has been driven by the fact that no human life could be better off unless accessibility to reasonable resources is provided like better health opportunities, better education and better quality of life. The inequality in human settlements is the second reason as my appetite asked me a lot of questions like why there is inequality, why women are part of decision making process, why children of poor are deprived of basic human needs. All these questions have answers and to look for and investigate for these answers, someone should seek professional training in social science so that he or she can describe the phenomenon.

I do have convictions that I can make the change and this conviction is the one of powers leading and driving me to achieve my goal.

A Good Citizen

Citizenship is an honor and all individuals living in a specific county by birth are considered citizens. Every individual is allocated a citizen number and in Pakistan this citizen number is provided as National Identity Card Number.

Some says that man is a social animal and many scholars in past have given the human habits based on greed, monopoly and subjugation of weaker. In reality, as Islam has given the clear statement that a human being either a man or a woman is better than all other creatures of God. That’s why Islam has said that saving the life of an individual means saving all humanity and killing an innocent individual means killing of all humanity. So man is not a social animal in a civilized world.

The duties of a good citizen first includes to understand his own rights and then to preserve the rights of others, to avoid conflicts, and live a peaceful life without harming anybody. Moreover, its duties include respect of law and to abide by the social, cultural, and legal norms. A good citizen always contributes to the development of its own being and also the development of collective citizens, he contributes to the security of his country.

A man as a human being is the unit of a complete society and if one unit is not doing well, all other units might have its impact. So everybody has to fulfill his own responsibilities so that no bad impact could be seen in a society.

Pleasure of College Life

When children are sent to their schools, they should be provided an encouraging environment so that they like to go to schools. College life is different from schools in many respects. Students are more independent in colleges and more options to participate actively in different events like debates, games and educational events.

The importance of college life is apparent as it forms the future of students. Students learn how to study effectively, they identify the role teachers, they learn how to respect teachers and they develop their education aptitude during college life.

College life is basically focused to draw lines for future endeavors. Most important aspect of college life is that it provides basic qualification to contest in professional exams, provides access to employment opportunities. In college life, students also learn how to compete for success while only increasing their own abilities. This promotes the concept of respect for merit.

College life’s important aspect is extra-curriculum activities. These activities include games, debates and contributing on different forums. These activities are important in order to establish confidence in students and enhance their role in both academic and social life. It provides also the exposure to other students and definitely a learning environment.

The college life also provides the best extract of good students who are leaders in future expeditions in their chosen careers. The leaders are those who are distinguished from others in many respects as they have the abilities to come up out of crises successfully and they are able to lead others.

Education system which is same for all will better contribute to provide best individuals to serve in different departments but the education system in Pakistan is lacking the basic principle to provide equal education for all, although some technical and vocational institutes should develop their own trained students.

College life is unforgettable for me as I was the one who won many titles in games and also in academic grounds. I have developed a wonderful group of friends and all are dedicated to their goals.

Newspapers

Newspapers and magazines are the only main form of print media and they are contributing agents in overall media industry. They are important as they provide daily updates on news, events and current affairs.

Newspapers are considered as a responsible media which is adherent to the national interests and portray the true pictures for the population. They play an important role in deriving decision process within nations. They preserve, respect and analyze histories of nations, gather most appropriate and relevant information.

Since newspapers are run by professional journalists, the journalism appears as a delicate profession in which the professionals have responsibilities of nation building and opinion building. Newspapers also contribute to provide the best opinion pages for population so that they can understand the logic behind socio-economic and other aspects of everyday life.

Newspapers are one of pillars of strong nations and this sect of media is mostly sensitive for population who rely on them. Newspapers are also published in different languages like in Pakistan we can newspapers in all regional languages and also in two main languages of Urdu and English.

Newspapers also provide recreational material for general population. On entertainment pages, they provide most up to date changes in film, TV and Theater activities. They provide review of the population on these electronic media matters.

Newspapers also provide information on national, regional and international economic decisions. The market dynamics are collected to be shared with individuals of nations. The newspapers are also focused on international order in order to provide information on global level.

The Earthquake Tragedy

Pakistan has some of its areas on fault line. In history Pakistan has seen many devastating earthquake shocks like in Quetta and also recently in 2005 in Muzaffarabad and parts of NWFP. Although man has developed huge technological advantages and has also acquired knowledge to counter many of its survival threats, but natural disasters are out of control of humanity.

Earthquake has systematic reasons based on movements of Earth’s Plates. The exact movement of these plates is hardly known to seismologists and so they are not able to predict the exact time of the disaster. Similarly in Pakistan, a huge lose was attributed to the 2005 earthquake.

Almighty have powers behind it and no one can know how to secure in the situation like in past. The destruction caused by earthquake in parts of Pakistan was diverse and huge proportion of population was affected by it, mostly the children, women and old age population was affected. Lot of school children were fall under collapsed buildings and some parts were even inaccessible for rescue work.

The rescue work was immensely started with the help of public and private departments, institutes. In history, civil society played a tremendous role to help the vulnerable communities in affected communities. Some buildings in Islamabad like Margalla Towers were collapsed and human lose was also there. The material damage could be borne but the human lose could never be repatriated.

We should develop our metrological departments on lines of timely warnings and population living on fault lines should be guided to shift. Moreover, natural disasters could not be stopped by human powers unless Almighty save humans but the rescue departments should be furnished with advance skills and rescue operation techniques.

Technical Education

Technical education along with general education is as much important for a country as the air for survival. The public sector could never produce better economic outputs unless there are a cadre technically educated people.

Technical education is different from liberal education as it focused on time driven technological learning. Modern state system requires people who are able to run modern machines in industrial sector and without industry no any country can integrate development to its economy.

Moving from traditional agricultural economy to modern industrial and manufactured economy is the aim of every developing country and Pakistan should focus on technical education as it still needs its industry to flourish.

Technical education would be a success if vocational training is added to the principle. In Pakistan, the industrial process is in passive situation but present always there and should be added with the help technical education.

One process should be introduced that technical education could be aligned with the liberal education. By this way, the population would be able to select objectively the best for them to have higher and technical education. Since most of the population in Pakistan is rural, and therefore there is a need to develop rural industries. These industries could be based on farm lands, livestock farms and fruits forms etc. The food processing is one of the successful industries in world and there should be a focus in Pakistan too.

So for economic development, technical education and its usage should be there and rural industries should also be developed.

Natural Disaster

Natural disasters are of many types ranging from heavy rains, floods, typhoons, fatigue, and earthquake etc. In Pakistan, we have history of heavy rains causing floods, and earthquakes. Natural disasters could not be stopped by human endeavors rather they could be avoided by adopting disaster management procedures. These procedures could be attributed as pre-warnings and education to population.

Disasters defer human life activities and they can pose severe danger to life on earth generally and human life particularly. These calamities and disasters eradicate human progress and life become stagnant as for example, the floods can destroy fields of crops and left cultivatable land as covered with mud and sand. All form of life on earth is endangered by these disasters and most severe disaster is earthquake during which less time is available for humans to retaliate.

Disasters are associated to every part of the earth and we have examples of Tsunami and Katrina which had left masses of human beings dead and with lost physical properties. Also it is not possible to develop measures to cut short the effects of the Tsunami type of disasters as they are totally hidden and revealed suddenly, although someone can adopt measure against floods, fatigues etc provided proper education is delivered to the population and also disaster management institute’s capacities are build.

In Pakistan we should develop the institutes of disaster management. After the earthquake in previous years, some steps are taken to develop institutes but their progress is more focused to build the damage so that no further vulnerabilities exit.