THE story of human civilization is, in essence, the story of roads.
Wherever roads were built, horizons widened, trade flowed, ideas travelled and cultures evolved. Roads, in every age, have connected not just places but possibilities. Yet, for nations that fear change, a road can be a political risk. In Pakistan, it can even become a curse. Many projects symbolize Pakistan’s modern transformation like the motorway. Conceived and championed by Nawaz Sharif, it represented a leap from a fragmented past towards a connected, mobile and ambitious future. The motorways changed the country’s geography and, slowly but profoundly, its sociology. Small towns opened to trade, rural youth reached urban universities and markets expanded beyond provincial borders. The motorway was not just a road, it was a quiet revolution in connectivity and aspiration. But revolutions are rarely kind to their authors.
The irony is cruel, the very progress that Nawaz Sharif delivered eventually diluted his political base. The people he connected became more exposed, more self-assured and less bound by old loyalties. Economic mobility brought social awareness and with awareness came political volatility. The Punjab that prospered most under his tenure now finds the unknowing, blinded by slogans, turning from progress to rhetoric. The same people who rose from his policies now mock the politics of delivery, seduced instead by slogans of defiance.
This paradox runs deeper than personalities. It reflects something fundamentally flawed in our collective political behaviour, an aversion to continuity, a resentment of competence. We have developed a strange national psychology, we mistrust those who work, doubt those who deliver and idolize those who merely shout. In Sindh, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has perfected the politics of managed deprivation. The roads stay broken, schools remain skeletal and hospitals exist largely in name. Poverty is not an accident there, it is policy. Dependency sustains loyalty. As long as people remain trapped in hardship, they are easier to control, easier to rally around nostalgia and slogans. The moment progress arrives, as seen in relatively developed urban pockets, PPP’s dominance begins to erode. The logic is painfully simple: in Pakistan, a deprived voter is a loyal voter.
The same pattern echoes elsewhere. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) survives on charisma and conflict rather than governance. Its rhetoric of change was unmatched; its record of delivery remains unconvincing. Yet, it continues to draw fervent loyalty, not for performance, but for emotion. In Balochistan, the feudal and tribal elite preside over stagnation, denying their people education and infrastructure, yet retaining their political supremacy. In all three provinces, non-performance seems to guarantee political survival.
In Punjab, where roads, metros and hospitals rose, progress became a burden, not a blessing. The paradox endures, in Pakistan, performance is punished and slogans are prized. This reveals a deeper national flaw: a society that blames its leaders but seldom examines its own complicity. Our political judgment, shaped more by emotion than reason, rewards noise over substance and rhetoric over performance. It is not just ignorance, but a failure of moral and civic upbringing, a culture that mistrusts competence, resents prosperity and cannot bear to see its own succeed without suspicion. We are a people who find it easier to be angry than to be grateful. We distrust those who build because their progress exposes our complacency. We admire rhetoric because it flatters our grievances. It is easier to chant than to change, easier to follow emotion than to evaluate evidence. We have turned democracy into theatre, full of noise, drama and spectacle, but devoid of seriousness. We do not vote for programs; we vote for demagoguery.
This more than corruption or inflation is Pakistan’s real tragedy, a political disorder born of moral confusion. We have learned to reward defiance, not discipline; rebellion, not reform; noise, not reason; and spectacle, not substance. We crave saviours, not servants. We glorify slogans and demonize results. We say we want progress, but the moment it challenges our emotional comfort, we reject it.Nations do not fall from hardship; they fall when they forsake those who built them, when they forget who worked, who struggled, who tried. Nawaz Sharif’s legacy, the roads, power plants, hospitals and infrastructure that stitched a fragmented country together, stands as a testament to governance and continuity. He connected Pakistan in ways few others ever did. Yet we remain too restless, too reactive, too easily seduced by anger to see what those works represent: not luxury, but possibility. Meanwhile, those who deliver little, in Sindh, in KP, in Balochistan, thrive on grievance, exploiting the same emotional instincts that have hollowed out our politics. They promise revolution but preserve decay; they preach freedom but profit from chaos. And the voters remain complicit, unfaithful to their own progress, blind to their own interests.
If gratitude is the seed of greatness, then ours never took root. We built monuments of progress but buried the spirit that made them possible. Every leader who tried to build was first celebrated, then crucified; every act of service eventually drowned in our sea of suspicion. We mistake cynicism for wisdom and betrayal for change. This is not the failure of politics, it is the failure of a people who cannot honour their own effort, who tear down what they should protect. Nations fall not when they are conquered, but when their people forget how to be grateful. And we, it seems, have long forgotten.
—The writer is PhD in Political Science, and visiting faculty at QAU Islamabad.
