The fabric of society is knit on a matrix of realities and dreams. Reality stems from environment and nature as a habitat of ecology, material conditions and the human context. The process of living thus provides the general parameters within which a society operates. However there are always a variety of options that individuals, groups, communities and societies can exercise in a set of circumstances. These ‘dreams’ or ‘aspirations’ are the task of special individuals within a society. Intellectuals, visionaries, artists and leaders can see the interplay between the humans who constitute the social entity and environmental elements and factors that they can relate to. The best use that a society can make of its potential and the resources at its disposal needs deep insight into its culture even if its plan of action is derived from an alien culture.
Pakistan’s small interlocking ecological and communal units have resulted in an urban scatter that links essentially agrarian rural settlements near rivers and pastoral ones on piedmonts with an intervening continuum of agro-pastoral life between them. As typical for Pakistan, the range of disasters is wide; but floods, droughts, storms and earthquakes are regular contributions from nature; while economic, political and religious crises come from our human resources.
Since administrators and politicians are held responsible for the mismanagement of resources, it is obvious that they need help to resolve the problems we face. I blame intellectuals, teachers, and Civil Society because they are the ‘engineers’ of society. It is their task to guide politicians and administrators in a failure of governance. However, since the “social engineers” too need to develop the capacity to guide society, society falls back on its values, communal structures and social paradigms as an automatic override for systemic failures. In such situations, sincere and competent, pragmatic individuals are the mainstay of state, society and nation.
