Editorial
A question now circulates widely in Pakistan. Political freedoms are shrinking, the economy is squeezing households, administration has grown harsher, and justice is hard to find. Yet the streets stay quiet. Why?
Recent conversations with university students point to a more troubling answer. The bond between the state and society is weakening. Young people increasingly feel disappointed, detached, and distrustful of the state and its institutions. Whether it is the administration, the judiciary, or any other organ of the state, many have stopped expecting it to deliver.
This is not simply the absence of protest. It is a question about the social contract itself.
The purpose of a state is not merely to keep order or preserve its authority. It exists to give citizens freedom, security, justice, economic opportunity, and the hope of a better life. Its real strength does not lie in its powers or its institutions. It lies in public trust, in consent, and in the belief that the state protects rights and secures the future.
When citizens feel denied political freedom, economic opportunity, social justice, and basic administrative fairness, that trust erodes. People stop seeing themselves as part of the state’s collective future and begin to withdraw from it.
Silence, therefore, is not proof of satisfaction. It may reflect despair, helplessness, and a conviction that collective effort changes nothing. Such a condition demands serious research and sustained dialogue with the public.
The state must ask itself hard questions. Why are citizens, especially the young, drifting away? What will restore their confidence? How can constitutional duties, civil liberties, justice, and good governance rebuild the relationship?
A state whose citizens lose hope cannot progress through administrative control alone. Its success is not measured by the absence of protest but by the presence of trust. The real question for Pakistan is not why people are silent. It is why trust is breaking, and what must be done to restore it.
The best-selling books of Republic Policy Think Tank, including the landmark book The Bureaucratic Coup, are available at Vanguard Books, Liberty Books, Readings, Kitab Sarai, Sang-e-Meel, Saeed Book Bank Islamabad, National Book Foundation, and others across Pakistan. Contact for home delivery: 0300 9552542.
