Literacy is the heart and life blood of development. Without it, Pakistan will remain an impoverished and a weak Third World country. If education does not prevail, the problems of Pakistan will reach at a stage which will make this country very vulnerable.

Stastically, Pakistan has made reasonable march since independence in many fields including education. Less than one million students were enrolled in schools at the time of independence, and, astonishingly, 12 million school- age children are enrolled. But more than 12 million children are doing job, putting their lives in danger and missing quality education. As a matter of fact, full enrollment at primary education is still not a reality, but a dream. The recent census tallies in China and India show that Pakistan is substantially behind the two large Asian nations. China’s literacy rate is near 90% and India has reached 65%. Pakistanis around 50 %, this means we need to do better. Moreover, it’s a moment of shame too, because we have lesser population and are not as huge as China and India.
If we look provincially on terms of education, NWFP, Baluchistan and Sindh was very much backward at the time of its formation. By now many universities are opened in these three states but sadly women literacy is still less than 30% in these provinces. The resources Punjab were enough to make the province 100 %, but feudal, bureaucratic and political forces did use the resources appropriately. Efforts from Pervaiz Elahi, ‘Parha Likha Punjab’ did not work out as there was lack of commitment while the MMA government effort in NWFP managed to increase just 1% of illiteracy rate in 5 years.

The new setup has a huge task to spread education. Firstly, awareness campaigns should be initiated so that the public, especially from the rural areas, should send both their sons and daughters to schools rather than to work, so that they know the importance of education. Secondly, the root of social and ideological problem is lack of education. People with vested interests target the illiterate for defaming Islam and our society. This happens because people don’t have the capability to distinguish between right and wrong. Moreover, lack of education is also the main cause for the disturbance in the economic sector. As people are not educationally qualified, they are unable to run businesses appropriately. When they face a crisis in their businesses they are forced to shut down because they lack the ability to identify the reasons of loss. In today’s global world, education is required to enhance otherwise we will not be able to promote our industries.

A point to be taken into consideration is that the meaning of literacy gets changed in our country so that the figures could be molested even further. This is done in order to show that the current regime has made landmark achievements in the field of education. Sometimes, they say who can read and write are literate, while at times they say a person who has reached 5th  standard is a literate and once it was also believed that  a person who could calculate is also a literate, everyone knows 2+2=4, how silly ! As I said, 100 % literacy is not a reality but a dream, but those nations succeed who dream. But we can’t go on dreaming, we have to take measures for a Gratis educational system.

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Tags: balochistan, education, news, NWFP, Pakistan, Politics, Punjab, Sindh