Ayaz Amir Daydreaming

Some other steps to indicate our seriousness: a uniform education system from the northern mountains to the Arabian Sea. Compulsory education for all, English from class one, new books and new syllabi, and no O- and A-levels. The Indians finished with O- and A-levels back in 1964. Why are we still stuck with them? If O- and A-levels were a guarantee of higher educational standards we would be ahead of India in education but are not.

It must be a requirement of the new education system that on the first day of the week the national anthem should be sung in every school; on the second, Iqbal's timeless poem, "Lab pay aati hai dua bun kay tamana meri"; on the third, something in Pashto by Khushal Khan Khattak; on the fourth, something from Bhitai or Bulleh Shah; on the fifth, a song in pure Balochi and one in Kashmiri; and on the sixth, as a remembrance of times past, a Bengali song by Nazrul Islam.

The Code of Civil Procedure needs urgent and drastic amendment to make the provision of justice easier. This should have been done sixty years ago but can no longer be avoided. Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry can take the first steps in this regard. (And, please, an end to the plastic shopping bag which will destroy the Republic sooner than the Taliban).

This may be the opportunity we have dreamt of all these years: of revitalising the Republic and building a prosperous and progressive Pakistan. The difference is that what was before just a dream is now a crying necessity. We either rise to the challenge we face by reinventing Pakistan. Or we remain the way we are, waiting resignedly for whatever awaits us.