When Syed Mustafa Kamal, MP from Muttahida Quami Movement party of Pakistan stood up to speak in Parliament on May 15, India was part of his speech not once but at least twice.
“The world is reaching for the moon and in Karachi, we are talking about children falling in the gutter,” he said, adding, “Look at our neighbour, India. We see on our TV screens, India has reached the moon and the next moment the story is about Karachi and about some child who has fallen into a gutter and is dying.”
That’s not the only thing that was unflattering for Pakistan. While Mustafa Kamal talked about India’s achievements, he also made another comparison between India and Pakistan’s education system and how Pakistan’s education system was lacking on many fronts.
He highlighted the dismal education levels in Pakistan, including ghost schools. “More than 2.62 crore children are not going to school. How can we sleep peacefully at night when crores are out of school? If we focus on just this one aspect of education, we will be doing a big service for our nation. You can make economic growth but eventually our economy will be hollowed out Universities are producing jobless youth.”
What he was referring to is the 68% ‘youth bulge’ of Pakistan or the demographic dividend that if leveraged would work wonders but if not nurtured properly would ‘become a threat’.
He complained that Pakistan universities were becoming factories churning out jobless youth.
“Look at India. Thanks to their education system, Indians are among the global CEOs of the top 25 companies. They are able to attract investment to their nation. We can’t compete with that,” said Syed Mustafa Kamal.
Just last month, another Pakistan MP, Maulana Fazlur Rehman had also made similar comments in the House when he said, “India is dreaming of becoming a superpower, while we are begging to avoid bankruptcy. Who is responsible for this?”
The right-wing Islamist leader had also taken a not-so-subtle dig at the establishment and the Pakistan Army saying they had reduced people’s representatives to mere puppets.
