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Is there a leadership crisis?

20 0
16.07.2025
The decision to divide India in 1947 was made after a great deal of effort by Quaid-i-Azam, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. During the discussions and deliberations for independence Jinnah suffered from a serious illness and his work took up most of his physical energy. Unfortunately, he had no lieutenant who could be trusted to take serious decisions or had the foresight to judge what was important. Divide (incorrectly) and rule This was why nobody had any idea of Pakistan’s boundaries even four days after the country became a sovereign state. The fact that the Radcliffe Award report had to define our boundaries is a joke and I think it was the greatest blunder in our history. The results of this mistake were not unexpected - the district of Gurdaspur which has a majority population of Muslims was given to India to provide a land route to Kashmir. We continue to suffer because of this. The two countries have fought three major wars but neither side has been able to take Kashmir by force. Lack of vision in post-independence leadership There was no team to manage governance except two junior joint secretaries: Ghulam Muhammad and Chaudhry Muhammad Ali. Ali was the secretary general who headed a committee of secretaries to make strategic decisions which were sent to the cabinet. This was largely a formality. The problem was that not a single person in the entire cabinet had political foresight or economic vision. Apart from this, there was a crowd of hundreds of thousands of refugees coming to Pakistan and it was a miracle how they were accommodated. Particularly after India refused to release any funds which were allocated to Pakistan as a consequence of the Partition. Inspiration in adversity So with this foundation, we started in a newly formed country. There was no accommodation or furniture for the staff of secretariat. In a hurry some barracks had been built for the Central Secretariat offices but there was no place to sit and the poor clerks worked while standing on the bare floors of those hutments. The clerks even had to buy the paper and pencils they used their own resources. They even had to attach papers to each other using thorns from wild bushes! In spite of all these problems, people's spirit, emotions and morale were high. Nobody was grumbling. Everyone felt that a dream had been fulfilled. A country of dreams to disasters Can somebody tell me where that spirit is now? From the very first day we were misled. We were led to believe that Pakistan is a ‘democracy’ rather an........

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