While the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan is faced with innumerable challenges, emanating from the past as well as present, his 'cleansing and cleaning' mission seems to be moving ahead as has been gathered from his recent launch of ‘Clean Pakistan, Green Pakistan’ with the citizens' participation.I would have taken it as yet another luring and ensnaring 'trip' to greener pastures had it not focussed on the energies and devotion of the common man whose motivation is being sought for transforming the country into a land of clean and green environment.The problem, however, with myopic people of my ilk who belong to the class of skeptics, by virtue of media background, is that everything appears yellow, not green, to us. I had been trying to sit on the other side of the fence in order to perceive everything green but could not achieve desirable results. Things have continued to appear yellow to my jaundiced, nay journalistic, eye but now I am ready to give benefit of doubt to Prime Minister Imran Khan, given his repeated- and trumpeted- emphasis on devolving this noble ('clean and green') mission on the common man.Of course, it is the citizen who matters more than a government or a politician. Societies flourishing and prospering without waiting for a descended saviour or for manna and quails from the heavens, have neutralized the ills of bad governance in many parts of the world, courtesy the empowerment of masses.If people are assigned participatory roles, it means that their empowerment has begun. The fact is that the decay of the government, wherever it is installed, is not essentially the decay of the society.It is, instead, the other way round: if a society decays, even tonnes of good governance cannot counter the ill effects of societal decay.Whatever the vision of governance the leaders have in their minds and hearts, the best system is the one that offsets the societal decay. This target is achievable only if the governments draw direct power through the people's participation.The successful world primarily owes its success to the theme that the government is not the panacea of all ills. Barring a very few advanced countries of the world, the rest of the globe is working on the model of governance that stands on lesser government. And, if lesser government is bolstered with greater public participation, the results are invariably expected to be marvellous.This scribe once conducted an interview of an Australian scholar and researcher, Dr John Steen, who narrated the wonderful results achieved in his country with the citizens' participation while coping with acute shortage of water.The government officials and authorities of Australia led from the front but their main thrust was on integrating the people's abilities into the system. And, it worked superbly.Clean, Green Pakistan can also yield desired results because it relies less on the governmental levers and more on people's abilities to reach the pollution-free destination. Of course, the ultimate relief is in the hands of the citizenry which ought to be reminded of its responsibilities for its own benefit. It is always the people-government cooperation that works.The government has announced 'Clean Green Champion Programme', describing it as an important pillar of Clean Green Pakistan. And the slogan is 'My city, my responsibility' that revolves around volunteers from amongst the people who would be given awards on the basis of points scored by way of efficient handling of these targets namely clean water, plantation, solid waste management, safe sanitation, hygiene and liquid waste management.I am inclined to draw the conclusion that if, someday, we succeed in coping with pollution and cleaning the atmosphere, we may soon be able to overcome pollution-laden attitudes in our socio-political scheme of things.mianrehman1@gmail.com
from The News International - National https://ift.tt/34xTaI6
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