PAKISTAN has spent much of its 79-year journey learning how to survive. Partition left millions uprooted; wars tested its resolve; political upheavals unsettled its institutions; terrorism scarred its communities; floods and earthquakes destroyed homes; economic crises repeatedly narrowed its horizons; and climate change now threatens to make uncertainty a permanent companion. Yet, through it all, Pakistan endured. It bent, but did not break. It stumbled, but rose again. That resilience is a national asset. But perhaps it is time to ask a more difficult question: Can a nation build its future merely by surviving its past?

Resilience tells us how to stand after a fall. Development asks why we keep falling. Resilience repairs the damage; progress redesigns the system that produced it. Resilience says, we will somehow get through........

© Pakistan Observer