PAKISTAN is a land inhabited by more than 200 million people. It is a nuclear power which has produced and preserved not only the weapon of mass destruction as a deterrent against any potential enemy, but has also produced complex guided missiles equipped with the latest software.

In the past, it has produced men like Abdus Salam, Agha Hasan Abedi and many others in different fields who were second to none and on a par with geniuses in the developed world.

Our doctors are recognised all over the world. The Covid-19 pandemic has struck the country like other countries and has taken more than 10,000 precious lives. A year has passed, but no lab or research institution in science and medicine in Pakistan has made an effort to develop any remedial medicine to treat this strange virus.

The government and the hapless people look towards vaccines from other countries. What went wrong that despite having brilliant minds, we cannot produce any scientific move to counter a pandemic?

Noam Chomsky, the modern era’s great cognitive scientist, philosopher and linguist, while recently delivering an online lecture at a private university in Karachi, lamented that Pakistan had stopped producing quality scientists and had embroiled more in religiosity.

Our policy planners must end this unfortunate decay in various fields of science and medicine. They must answer their national poet’s question who asked in his famous poem ‘Awaz-i-Ghaib’ a century ago with great anxiety:

Zafar Iqbal

Lahore

Published in Dawn, January 24th, 2021