This Youth Day, August 12, I will wait to hear an awakened dreamer from Pakistan's Gen Z. I suspect I will keep waiting. 

Look around the neighbourhood. In 2022, SriLanka's Aragalaya (Struggle) toppled a dynasty the Rajapaksa family, who had dominated the country's governance for nearly two decades.

In 2024, Bangladesh's students forced Sheikh Hasina from power over a discriminatory civil service job quota system that heavily favored descendants of 1971 “freedom fighters”/Mukti Bhani  (closely tied to the ruling party).

In September 2025, Nepal's Gen Z burned their parliament (Singha Durbar) over a social media ban and years of corruption, and within a week a prime minister was gone.

This July, in Delhi, a satirical movement literally named after a cockroach, the insect politicians reach for when they want to describe people they despise, forced India's education minister to resign over exam paper leaks.

 Four countries. One region. One restless generation. Pakistan, meanwhile, is largely watching from the sidelines of its own crises.

 Four countries. One region. One restless generation. Pakistan, meanwhile, is largely watching from the sidelines of its own crises.

I do not want to interfere in Gen Z's affairs. This generation does not need another lecture from someone who "was young once. "But I will claim the right of a qualified non-specialist. Long before hashtags, I was a youth leader. Later I ran youth-focused non-profits and initiatives, including, in August 2003, Pakistan's first international youth conference, built around human development, with theatre, film and peace dialogues with South Asian delegates. I trained and mentored young people from Islamabad's elite enclaves and from slums and far-flung districts alike, on the simple, stubborn idea that they could dare to dream. My only real shortcoming was being unglamorous, non-elite, a woman with an ordinary face and a complicated personal life. Otherwise I might today be introduced as a guru, a revered mentor or atleast as a motivational speaker. I say this because it explains why I watch this generation with more attachment than distance.

Start with student unions since every........

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