"Taking the Initiative" by Haider Mufti

Jon Ronson, who is now a celebrated writer, of the best-seller book So You have Been Publically Shamed, had been shamed into thinking that his book on public-shaming could never be a success. Aside from the seeing the irony of getting shamed into not writing a book on public-shaming acting as an incentive to his motivation to complete the publication which became an enormous success, it also sets another example of determination and dedication coming to fruition as millions of its copies were sold ,other than helping to explain the problem faced by women in Pakistan. This did require an initiative to be taken by him to know what the reality has to say about his work being worthy of existence on bookshelves of libraries. Indeed it is the reality whose opinion should be the most valuable over all of the discouragements’, hurdles’, impediments’ and frowners’ opinion which really comes across as irrelevant in the end. The problem faced by the women in the society of Pakistan can be explained using the Crowd Psychology theories explained in the book by Jon. They do explain how women in a unique country such as Pakistan have been made unproductive and I would like to call it the ‘Belabor over action’ problem. The Crowd Psychology theories corroboratively in the book show how in a crowd people are stripped out of their self-consciousness, which makes them rant almost anything about the subject of the crowd, for example roaring the motto of a politician in a caucus by a single person in a crowd may generate boundless amount of ripples by making other people copy that single person. This is because in a crowd people acquire a state of mind which prompts them to copy the belaboring. There is somewhat similar state of mind, where Pakistani women think they are abysmal, that has infected the women of the country of Pakistan, which essentially makes them want to only cry rather than taking an initiative or taking their future in their own hands. What people say in a crowd are often those things that they would not be able to say to that politician if they met in person - this is when they are in the normal state of mind. There seems to be a virtual crowd of all women in Pakistan who refuse to take initiative but talk much of women in the country being deprived of their rights. They copy each other in crying over their disparity rather than taking initiative. Women need to stop becoming part of this big crowd and face their problem by meeting with it in person. The biggest challenge faced by women in Pakistan is indeed the lack of taking initiative aside from other problems such as disapproval from male counterparts which is aggravated by merely when women stand for themselves in a contrite way, like they are doing something wrong. When women do not even bother to take an initiative, they deprive themselves of opinion of the reality and practical application. 

This may come across as belittling or as a perspective of someone who perceives patriarchy and other problems as negligible in a country like Pakistan but there many examples in the recent which prove that in front of the problem of not taking initiative other problems such as stereotyping and male-dominance are insignificant. On the 27th of September, an image had been released by ministry in India responsible for the transportation showing a female traffic warden stopping cars from crossing the zebra cross. The ministry had erred in acknowledging the image being taken in India. Later it was identified that the image portraying this unfamiliar scene was taken in Pakistan. Aside from showing the progressing position of women in Pakistan, the image proves that women who take initiative to do something in Pakistan, can do a job even as vulnerable as traffic wardenship, beyond a doubt. Another example from a few days is when a woman named Gulban from Thar, Pakistan had been recruited as driver, to transport 60 tons of coal trucks from place to place. Other than appreciating the bravery and courage of Gulban, it can be seen that the administration of transport agency accepted to recruit a female driver for such a stereotyped job. This also corroborates the fact that many women are not where they should be because of lack of taking initiative like Gulban and with their state of mind of being part of a crowd that rants to underestimate itself. Another uncontestable example that demonstrates the power of taking initiative is of Arfa Karim, who with her accolades and credentials from Microsoft had made many search a word like pinnacle to describe success. 

It would seem coherent at first if one stated that the biggest challenge that women face in Pakistan is the problem of lack of education. This is the argument that is based on the assumption that men receive the full formal education and women do not. But by examining this argument and to expound on it, it would be worth noting that men who do indeed receive post-graduate education do not prove to be any lucrative for the country in any way. This is indeed reflected by the results of political leadership elections in the country. Most of the times a corrupt leadership is brought into power even when the argument of education assumes that all men in Pakistan are educated, what benefit is education of then? Indeed Pakistan has been known by the Transparency International for a long time in its list for the most corrupt countries in the world for fact. It can also be seen that economically what Pakistan has seen is a decline and plummeting charts when it comes infrastructure development over the decades. Which is to suggest that the low position of women in Pakistan to be blamed onto the culpable lack of ability to take initiative by the people to make a rational choice in choosing their leader. 

According to principles of democracy the real power resides with people and it is the duty of every citizen to take part in politics as said by Aristotle, but in Pakistan what we is even some of the most educated men around us supporting the despots, like in many other countries. It can be said that ameliorating the conditions of Pakistan is tangentially linked with education, and more associated with motivation that is needed to make people take initiative. Let their voice say what they need and want and collective effort is needed to give rise to a leadership that is less conservative and reactionary and more progressive enough to uplift the position of women in the country. The pessimistic assumption that change in a country like Pakistan is impossible is at best what it can be called, a pessimistic assumption, this is the element in our society that prevent people from using their massive amount of power to betterment of the country. Women nonetheless are the people of this country and they need to take the initiative of using their vote to bring up the right people for leadership. Relying on mourning the loss and not on making an effort is like travelling the road without knowing your destination.