In the last few days I have read quite a number of letters and articles in the Pakistani press bemoaning the brain drain afflicting our country. Most explore its causes and consequences; some accuse those leaving of being selfish and lacking a spirit of sacrifice. I thought it high time to contribute my two bit to the discussion. I am a 25-year-old doctor and I am leaving Pakistan. I am going abroad to specialize, and I don’t know if I will come back.

I do not see much going right with this country. The future seems bleak; the past none too bright. When one compares where we stand today with much of the western world, well… there is no comparison really. What is it in the west that attracts my generation, and what is it about our homeland that repels us? I can speak only for myself, and the list is long. Where shall I begin?

Let us take the obvious issue of the economy first. We all know highly qualified well-educated youngsters who are roaming the streets looking for jobs. But has anybody even looked at the kind of jobs on offer? I will speak of my profession first. After graduation, a house officer is paid between three and a half to four and a half thousand rupees a month. It takes no Sartaj Aziz to figure out one cannot live independently on that amount. And I am talking of a basic minimum standard of living. Let us look further. All right, so you finished your house job; what next? Are there jobs in the private sector? Of course not, who wants a simple M.B.,B.S.? All right, how about the post graduate institutions affiliated with the government-run hospitals? You may need a ‘parchi’ from God Almighty himself if you are to get into one. So what is one to do? Establish a private clinic and try ones best to treat patients with the very limited knowledge and experience a simple MBBS degree affords you? Is that really ethical and fair to your patients? Isn’t the first principle of medicine ‘Do no harm’? Let us assume you are lucky enough to have rich parents… you go abroad, become a specialist, come back and are appointed assistant professor at a medical college. How much do they pay you for twenty-four long years of studying yourself to extinction? Nowhere near enough. I hope I have made my point. There are very few jobs, and of those that do exist most pay laughable salaries.

Moving on to education. Of course, a remotely decent education costs money. The governments system of education is better left unmentioned in this discussion for obvious reasons. To give one’s children a decent education, one must pay for it, and pay dearly. The tuition fees of the top professional colleges in the country (what few of them that we have) run in six figures annually. The argument would be… well, private education in the west also costs a lot. Well, first and foremost, not everywhere does the state charge money for a decent education. Secondly, there are always reasonable, less-costly alternatives. Other than the Aga Khan University (AKU), Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and a few other expensive, high-caliber institutions, what educational opportunities does this country of 140 million have to offer its young? By the way, will some enlightened soul in the commerce ministry please lift the customs/import duty on books? And stop taxing private schools. It is only passed on to the parents of students.

The status of healthcare in the country is appalling. Being in the profession I have seen that it is rotten to the core. Patients are treated as commodities to be milked dry, regardless of their socioeconomic standing. Life saving drugs are unavailable in hospitals and have to be bought from the open market, often at prohibitive prices. Diagnostic facilities are minimal. Proper hygiene is not practiced. Aseptic techniques are conveniently ignored in our surgical wards and I assume the wound infection rates in our hospitals will be found to be among the highest in the world if research is conducted towards that effect. But who has money for research, and why bother anyway? It doesn’t affect your career, your promotions. We have simpler methods for that. Merit can go jump off a cliff. Frankly, I wouldn’t be caught dead in a government run hospital, as a patient, a caregiver or even a cadaver.

And now, civil society. Where does one start on this one? Well… let us take our attitudes to religion first… I do not want my child murdered simply for saying in his innocence that he does not believe in angels because he has never seen one. I do not want another’s morals imposed upon me. I do not want to be told whether or not I should watch Cable TV or have an Internet connection. I do not want my child to grow up thinking lying, bribery and all other sins which we commit daily are all ok as long as you pray five (or maybe even four) times a day. I do not want my child growing up a hypocrite. I do not want her asking me in all innocence why Samia Sarwar is dead or why Mehwish Miankhel was killed. I do not want my child witnessing a preemptive uproar in parliament when somebody tries to discuss honour killings. I do not want her to be told by the Lahore High Court that killing for honour is no offence. I do not want my child reading in the newspaper about five murdered Qadianis, killed because of their religion. I do not want my child’s testimony in a murder case to be inadmissible simply because of her gender. And most of all, I do not want my child to be discriminated against for her religious beliefs.

Law and order in the country today is a joke, and a very sad one at that. How many of us have been stopped on the road, searched and kept waiting for the head constable or some other superior, only to be released on the payment of a small ‘fine’. How many lost innocent friends, relatives and acquaintances in the famous anti terrorist clean-up operation of 1995 in Karachi? (Thank you, Naseerullah Babar). Do I really want to die hit by a bus on the GT road simply because the driver was high on marijuana? Do I want to be kept waiting 15 minutes at an intersection for Governor Saheb’s motorcade to pass by? And no, despite the lip service the military government has paid to these issues, the practice has not been eradicated. I don’t want to be told I cannot stand on the sidewalk with four friends sipping tea because the district magistrate thought this would be a good time to enforce section 144 of the CrPC. Has any law ever been more abused?

The less said about our bureaucracy, the better, but I must say the red tape and corruption in our offices is a major factor in making this country more unattractive than it already is. Why should I give a tax officer money for ‘chai-pani’ because his interpretation of some 1869 law on taxation differs from one week to the next? By the way, do you know that most of our police laws hail from the previous century? Of course, who has time from extracting confessions through torture to actually sit down and think of revising the obsolete laws? Also, one mustn’t forget the draconian Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR-40). Enough said.

The argument that countries to which young Pakistanis are migrating have not spent a penny on them is a shallow one to say the least. How many people emigrating from Pakistan have actually been to Government educational institutions? How many of them have had tax-payers money spent on their education? I have no hard data but I guess they would be in the minority. What value in the outside world does the degree of a Government run University have? Most of us were lucky enough to have parents who have paid three figure fees to our schools, four figures to our colleges and five or six figures to our Universities. In the meantime, public money has gone into debt servicing, defense and bank accounts in Switzerland. Money spent on the emigrating youth’s education? None whatsoever.

There is just so much wrong with Pakistan today that we, the educated youth, find life here unacceptably difficult and are looking for alternatives. We deserve better. Those in the corridors of power have been and still are hopelessly out of touch with the younger generation. The country is paying dearly as a consequence. Until somebody puts things in order, the talented and educated young of Pakistan cannot be expected to stay put or come back when better alternatives are readily available. In today’s global village, our needs and desires have to be addressed, or Pakistan risks losing us forever.