Sustainable societies
Survival – the first thought that popped up in the mind of a human after the evolution of life on earth.
The quest for security gave birth to the formation of societies. A society is a system where people live together under the ambit of rules and regulations for achieving economic and social gains.
For this purpose, institutions are formed to ensure public service delivery. Institutions work to safeguard the sanctity of the constitutional framework designed to implement the set of rules for governing the public at large.
To run the system of a state, governance models are adopted for allowing people from the society to participate in the betterment of a social structure.
Such a system, if gets corrupted, spurs social collapse.Additionally, quality of human resource lays the foundation for a sustainable society.
People are like building blocks of social fabric. This can be illustrated by the fact that even a drop counts when it comes to the importance of water in a tank.
Similarly, every person counts in social development. Sustainable societies put all their focus on improving the quality of intellect of the individuals within a society.
Without any iota of doubt, prosperity and chaos are the choices made by the people depending on their mental capacity to think and grow.
When societies do not invest in their people, their downfall becomes their fortune. If a state invests in people to enhance their skills and intellect, a state can gain much progress without flexing its muscles to forcefully control its population.
Sustainable societies believe in bringing peace in society by altering the minds of people. In such societies, the crime rate is reduced not through policing but by giving awareness to the people regarding the importance of their lives and the meaning of their existence.
A livable society ensures tolerance, freedom of speech, and mutual co-existence among different segments of society.
Such a bonding among different factions of society is achieved through education. On the other hand, institutions of developed societies are inclusive in nature.
They win the confidence of the public through public service delivery. Public service delivery is a tool that allows people to trust in institutions making it possible for a government to get the required support to govern the masses.
Additionally, a sustainable society always provides parity in the division of resources and equal access to every class to the available opportunities.
This is important for minimizing class differences and ensuring upward mobility in a society. However, if upward mobility is restricted in society, class struggle starts which is the first step of social collision.
The most regrettable phenomenon of elite capture evolves when social mobility is blocked by a group of elites who not only extract resources for their personal benefits but also rule the public by manipulating the elections.
In addition to this, the provision of justice is a prerequisite for a sustainable social order. When justice is readily available, crime rate against innocent citizens is automatically contained and state thrives by leaps and bounds.
The evils of intolerance, mob justice, and extremism happen in the absence of provision of timely justice in a society.
In fact, we are living in a volatile society and the elements of a sustainable society are hardly found in our social structure.
A sustainable society is an alien concept for many people in our country. It is time for us to think about the nature of social fissures we have developed by negating the concept of a sustainable social order.
This social order will give benefit to a limited section of society for a few years but after that class struggle, owing to the exploitation of the poor at the hands of the rich, may give rise to social chaos and disorder.
It is time to act before it gets too late as history has got no evidence in support of the fact that regressive societies have ever survived.
—The writer is contributing columnist, based in Lahore
