Discipline in public life ensures peace and harmony which in turn offers impetus to the forces of progress and prosperity. No country, big or small, can afford to play duck and drake with the dirty called discipline. All talk of equity or social justice becomes a cry in the wilderness or a pompous promise if the powers that be fail to comprehended and carry out the dictates of discipline at all costs and in all situations. With discipline as a way of life, all plans, policies, and programmes are bound to bear fruit.
Whenever people in public life or in private enterprise dilute the demands of discipline, most aspiration and achievement go astray, leading to failure and frustration at various levels. Discipline for countries like India, which are standing at the threshold of economic break therough, and a stupendous store of opportunities, is the most immediate and urgent pre-requisites. Discipline for the rules and rule is an essential ingredient if we mean business in field and factories.
The recent outbreak of plague and the wrong signals that this “limited epidemic ” sent across the world, was not an act of God as some would like us to believe but the regretful result of unpardonable negligence on the part of civic authorities. The woeful way the routine calls of duty and discipline by paid public servants were given a go is a matter of crying shame for one and all.
The heaps of garbage in towns, cities, and metros were allowed to rot and their removal left to lag-pickers, speak volumes of the callous attitude toward discipline and devotion to duty. It is high time that we sit up and do some serious heart searching.
The ease with which state/opposition sponsored “bands” are organized in our country is another area of concern. With discipline in public life under a cloud, the entire socio-economic momentum is brought to a grinding halt. When such is the sadistic approach toward the discipline there is nothing that can come to our rescue if some bigger calamity overtakes us in future.
The remedy of so money ills that afflict us today lies not in talk but in the restoration of discipline in public life. Discipline is the only route that can take us to our rightful place among the comity of nation.
The steady slide indiscipline among elected representatives of people manifests itself, more often than not, in state legislatures, where less light and more heat generated over issues of public interest. Some time drama of the absurd is enacted in such a way that all decency of debate and deliberation arte thrown to the winds and only lung- power of muscle-power becomes the norm of the proceeding. Defections, floor-crossing, abductions and they are a painful pointer to the near collapse of discipline in public life.
Still worse things happen at the time of elections. In place of issues, intimidation of voters, and instead of performance, the pressure becomes prominent. Vilifications, vituperations, and even violence become the modus operandi of those who ought to have presented themselves as a specimen of discipline and decorum. Such is the sad scenario that one has to witness every now and then, one pretext or the other.
Germany and Japan have become economic gaits, after having been reduced the ashes after the second world war, is not something that we can attribute to some fluke of fortune. Both the countries have come to occupy their present economic supremacy due to the unstinted fact of their rulers and the ruled in the golden principle of hard work and discipline in their private and public life.
In Pakistan, we have vast men-power, technological expertise, and natural resources. If we make discipline a part and parcel of our psyche and our day- to – day dealings, there nothing that we can not aim at and achieve. Short plucking the stars from heaven, we can change the face of Pakistan if we sincerely and seriously enforce the pristine principle of discipline in all walk of Pakistan life, without fear or favor.
Those sitting at half of the affairs as well as those who are wielding state power, have to become models of perception and performance, concept and conduct. There is no shortcut to development, nor any substitute of discipline. In fact, their combination can leave us far behind the race of economic independence and political stability. All said discipline should be the order of public” life with no ifs and buts attached to it.