Thought Behind Things · Jun 16, 2023 · 1:08:05
When you look after people, they look after you
Unilever Pakistan's CEO and education reformer Shehzad Roy argue that paying workers more than the minimum wage is a commercial decision, not charity.
with Amir Paracha & Shehzad Roy
11 min read
A vicious cycle: inflation outpaces incomes
Muzamil opened the conversation with a question he said had been on his mind for a while: not the top-down economic indicators everyone was quoting, but what those numbers actually meant for the ordinary Pakistani, the majority who live rural or peri-urban and who, in his words, were never given a fighting chance to begin with.
Amir Paracha answered first, in his capacity as CEO of a company whose products reach what he called the last mile of the country. “Prices have actually doubled,” he said. “But people’s wages, or their businesses, haven’t grown by that percentage.” The result, he explained, is that low-income households cut everything down to bare necessity, businesses lose sales as a consequence, and the workforce behind those businesses gets hit in turn. “The situation is tough, but I’m hopeful that, God willing, we’ll come out of it,” he said, describing the country as caught in a vicious cycle rather than a single bad year.
The fear isn’t collapse, it’s stagnation
Shehzad Roy took the question somewhere more personal. He referenced a line of poetry he said had come back to him: “My worry isn’t how this country will run. My worry is that it keeps running exactly like this.” Through Zindagi Trust and his newer organization Durbeen, he said, he’d had the chance to meet Pakistan up close, and the country struck him as one of extremes: people who will show up for a stranger’s crisis without being asked, sitting next to uneven growth so stark that a gleaming hospital and an open sewer can share the same city block.
From there Roy pivoted to how he came to fair living wage at all. He said he knew what minimum wage was, and that nobody would argue against paying it. What he hadn’t understood, until conversations with Paracha, was that fair living wage could be pursued as policy, built into law, rather than treated as a slogan. He described his own instinct as an activist through what he called his four A’s: analysis of a situation, action through changing a law, advocacy to shift the wider mindset, and agitation as the last resort when nothing else has worked, the route he said Zindagi Trust took to get corporal punishment criminalized. Paracha’s argument, as Roy relayed it, was different: a law without buy-in from business and civil society first sits unenforced, and any change imposed from the top before people believe in it stays cosmetic. Roy said he came around to that view only after reflecting on Pakistani mindsets he’d seen elsewhere, like a man who holds a door for an elder and then argues with that same elder minutes later in traffic: the goodness is there, he said, but the understanding isn’t.
The commercial case: what Henry Ford proved in 1913
Pressed by Muzamil to explain the “magic” he’d used to bring Roy around, Paracha told a story from 2013, when he moved from marketing into sales at Unilever and found the company’s distributor-employed sales force, roughly 7,000 to 8,000 people, was losing 45 percent of its people every year on wages of around 12,700 to 13,200 rupees against a minimum wage of 14,000. Two years in, the entire sales force had turned over. There was no institutional knowledge left to retain.
He said the case that convinced him came from a book about Henry Ford, who in 1913 doubled the wage on his Model T production line from $2.50 to $5 a day after losing half his workforce annually. The rest of the auto industry called it reckless. Attrition at Ford dropped to near zero, productivity climbed, and the Model T became the best-selling car in America by 1915, netting Ford ten million dollars that year. “When you look after people, they look after you,” Paracha said. He applied the same logic at Unilever over three years: doubling sales-force pay, then adding health insurance through a company called Naya Jeevan, then extending coverage to parents and children’s education. Total spend: 100 million rupees. Sales, he said, doubled, and outpaced what the prior 60 years combined had produced. Attrition fell to a fraction of its former rate. “Leave morality aside,” he said. “This is a commercial case.”
Minimum wage vs. fair living wage, city by city
Roy asked the obvious follow-up: what actually separates the two figures? Paracha explained that a global body called the Fair Living Wage Network calculates cost of living city by city, adjusted for purchasing power, rent, and inflation, unlike Pakistan’s statutory minimum wage, which he said sat frozen at 1,400 rupees from 1969 until 1993 with no real revision for 31 years. By the network’s numbers, Islamabad’s fair living wage runs around 57,000 rupees, Karachi and Lahore sit near 50,000 to 51,000, the rest of urban Pakistan is closer to 40,000, and rural areas fall to roughly 35,000. The gap against the legal minimum wage, he said, runs somewhere between 1.8 and 2 times.
Paracha grouped employers into four categories: willing and able, willing but unable, unwilling and unable, and unwilling but able. Unilever Pakistan, he said, has pledged to move all 17,000 people tied to the company, of whom only 1,000 sit on its own payroll and 16,000 are third-party contractual staff with no legal claim on the company at all, to a fair living wage by 2025, on a costed, McKinsey-advised roadmap that had already lifted pay from the low-20,000s to 35,000 rupees within a year. “We are willing and we are able,” he said, framing the goal as ethical compliance that goes beyond what law requires, not legal compliance alone.
Beyond the paycheck: human resource or human capital
Muzamil turned the question toward Roy: why does this matter beyond the money itself? Roy answered with an image from a trip to Dubai the month before. In the same week, he said, people were dying in queues for subsidized flour costing 2,400 rupees a bag, while others stood in line to spend 1,200 rupees on coffee, roughly the same amount, spent by two different people, on opposite ends of survival. “That is less than the minimum wage for one person,” he said of a domestic-worker couple he’d separately picked up on an Islamabad road late one night, working eleven-hour days for a combined 20,000 rupees between them. “Who regulates that?”
Roy connected this to his education work, describing the difference between charity and reform: charity, he argued, gets people to a point of “something is better than nothing” and stalls there, while reform changes the underlying system. He said Zindagi Trust had shifted its own framing years ago, from worrying about children who never reach a classroom to worrying more about children who spend ten years inside a state school and emerge with no critical thinking, no skill, and no job. Converting people into what he called human capital, not just human resource, requires investment that outlasts a single act of generosity. He said he’d put the same question about the country’s future to roughly 350 people across different industries on his podcast tour, and the answer he kept hearing back was that Pakistan’s youth population, at around 65 percent, is treated as a strength by default, when an uneducated, unhealthy youth population becomes a weakness just as fast.
On his own household staff, Roy said he’d stopped giving money to strangers as his main form of charity and instead raised his house staff’s pay directly and extended them medical coverage his own family relied on, arguing that incentivizing people already working hard matters more than handing money to whoever happens to ask. He was blunt about the alternative: bargaining down a fruit seller by 30 rupees and then giving 500 rupees to someone unemployed further down the road doesn’t move anyone’s life forward, it just makes the giver feel generous.
Durbeen and the teacher licensing gap
The conversation had turned toward AI and tools like ChatGPT, with Muzamil asking whether Pakistan’s education system could realistically prepare children for a future built on critical thinking and creativity rather than rote learning. Roy said the debate around AI was too large for him to speak to directly, but that early childhood development, roughly up to age five or six, still depends on human interaction no technology replaces; content and apps become useful supplements only after that foundation is set. He then turned to Durbeen, asking rhetorically how far technology and apps could substitute for reform in a country with patchy electricity and little content in regional languages, and argued the deeper problem sits further up the system: Pakistan, he said, had decided teachers don’t need a real degree, only a short test, treating the profession as unlike medicine even though a child’s brain development is just as exacting a science as a body’s.
Durbeen, he said, is the only Pakistani organization to partner with Oxford University to design a teacher-training program, and it now runs a four-year, tuition-free Bachelor of Education at the Teachers Training College in Hussainabad, Karachi, in exchange for a three-year commitment to teach in government schools at what he called a starting banker’s salary. Licensing itself, he said, sits with a three-way public-private structure: Aga Khan University, Durbeen, and the government’s STEDA, so that no single party can shortcut the standard. “This is what Durbeen is,” he said, adding that he considers himself a systems replicator rather than an educationist by training.
Making the movement contagious, not mandatory
Both guests returned repeatedly to the same mechanism: change spreading through example rather than mandate. Paracha, describing himself as a marketer by profession, framed fair living wage as a brand going through its own adoption curve, currently at the awareness stage rather than the policy stage. He argued Pakistan’s real problem shows up in its human development index ranking, which he said had fallen to 161st out of 184 countries, down from 150th three years earlier and lowest in South Asia, even as GDP figures looked comparatively better in some periods, because concentrated wealth without redistribution doesn’t move the standard of living for anyone outside a narrow group.
His prescription rested on a distinction he drew explicitly: efficiency means squeezing the same output from fewer people, while productivity means getting more output from the same people, and Pakistan, he argued, needs the latter, not the former, to fund higher wages. Raise productivity first, which creates room to pay people properly, then ask government for tax credits on top of that for firms bridging workers to a fair living wage, since taxes exist to fund the same public services those workers would otherwise queue for. Roy pushed on the trust required for that kind of model to work, and Paracha agreed it depends on employees believing an employer’s promise that a share of future profit will reach them. He said roughly eight to ten other companies, including Bank Alfalah, Bank of Punjab, and Jazz, had already joined the effort, calling it a movement rather than a Unilever initiative, deliberately built city by city so that pay expectations track local cost of living rather than a single national number.
A turning point, if Pakistan can navigate it
Closing the conversation, Muzamil asked Paracha for his read on where the current economic situation goes from here. Paracha called it the hardest stretch he’d seen in his lifetime, describing a first-time confluence of political, economic, social, and climatic uncertainty hitting simultaneously, where historically only one or two of those had gone wrong at once. He drew a parallel to Bangladesh’s 1991 turnaround and Indonesia’s 1997 recovery, both of which he said started from worse positions than Pakistan faces now, and closed with a line he attributed to the writer Ishfaq Ahmed: when difficulty knocks on the door, don’t panic, get up and open it, because success arrives having changed its base.
Roy’s closing note looked further out. Asked to describe, without hedging or hope, what Pakistan looks like in 2050, he pointed to population management as the issue nobody treats with urgency, alongside climate change. He described a program tying reproductive health education to marriage registration through Nadra, so that a nikah cannot be registered without a completed course, calling it a near-term reform already in motion. Every other gain, in education, health, or wages, he argued, gets undercut if population growth isn’t managed alongside them. “Technology will uplift Pakistan,” he said of the country’s young population, but only if that basic condition is met first.
Full transcript
Sare khawateen-o-hazraat, welcome back to another episode of Thought Behind Things. Aaj hamare saath maujood hain do bohat hi khaas mehmaan, ek already pehle aa chuke hain, one of the most viewed guest on the platform. Uh aur dusre Pakistan ke hardil-aziz, Pakistan ke bonafide vampire, uh jo kabhi age hi nahi hote. Uh woh bhi hamare saath maujood hain, but uh thoda sa unko introduce karane se pehle, let me just uh talk a little bit about why uh we have this sort of panel together. Um Pakistan mein is waqt halaat hum sab ko pata hai, bohat ajeeb hain. Uh ajeeb is the word that I'll use because they're uncertain, they're confusing, uh ek ek ajeeb sa dar sa, ek doom doom's day ki feeling aa rahi hai andar. Um and we're all going ahead with whatever we're doing because obviously that's how what we have to do. But uh bohat jo hamara discourse hai, woh unfortunately bohat saari aur cheezon pe toh hai, woh cosmetic cheezon pe toh is waqt laga hua hai. Uh but mera ek personally jo interest budget se raha hai, woh yeh hai ke yaar jo aam Pakistani hai, uh jo hum numbers dekh rahe hain, isi podcast ke upar humne kuch arsa pehle bohat zyada mote mote bade top-down economic indicators aise sune, uh jisse aise lagta hai ke ji tabahi ho jayegi. Um you know economy ki, yeh badi badi baatein waise toh karte hue theek hai, you know, guzar jaati hain. Uh but I really wanted to understand the real impact of these numbers, of this potential outcome on the mass population of Pakistan. Not me, not you, uh the ordinary Pakistani, uh jo ke almost majority of our population hai, jo rural mein hai, jo peri-urban mein hai. Um jisko unfortunately uh humne ek behtar opportunity kabhi di hi nahi. We didn't even give them a fighting chance. Uh iske liye aaj hamare saath maujood hain uh Unilever ke CEO, Aamir Paracha and Shahzad Roy, uh who's uh been very active in uh you know his social activism, particularly in education and most recently on fair living wage. Guys, thank you so much for being part of the show.
Thank you, Zeeshan.
Uh main thoda sa conversation start karunga uh Aamir bhai aap se. If you can just sort of tell me, I know that you've been talking about uh fair living wage for a while. Uh usi ko context mein rakhte hue, tell me a little bit about what's really going on because I know uh as as a brand, you're one that really reaches down to the arteries, the last real last mile of Pakistan, right? Aapka sachet jo hai woh gaon gaon tak pahunchta hai uh and aapko woh pulse phir milti bhi hai uh feedback mein. Kya what's what's the average Pakistani going through right now?
Dekhein, main khayal mein uh sab ko pata hai Pakistan is going through tough time. Uh mushkil halaat hain aur uh uski wajah se um inflation bohat badh gayi hai. Uh koi aap 40 keh raha hai, koi 45 keh raha hai, koi 50 feesad keh raha hai. Jiski wajah se cheezein bohat mehengi ho gayi hain. Prices actually double ho gayi hain. Aur logon ki jo tankhwayein hain ya logon ka jo karobar hai woh uh percentage se nahi badha. Hmm. Toh zahiri baat hai ke logon ke upar is waqt uh jo ikhrajat apne pura karna mushkil ho gaya hai. Uh aur iski wajah se jo kam aamdani ke log hain woh bohat zyada pareshan hain. Uh uh jiski wajah se zahiri baat hai businesses bhi impact ho rahe hain because kyunki unki aamdani kam ho gayi hai toh unhone uh apne jo ikhrajat hain unko sirf wahan tak mehdood kar diya jo unki bohat zyada zaroori zarooriyaat hain aur jo bohat zyada zaroori cheez nahi hai usko unhone istemaal karna band kar diya. Uska zahiri baat hai ek vicious cycle start hota hai jab woh usko chhod dete hain toh company ki sale jab kam ho jaati hai toh zahiri baat hai ke uski jo puri jo workforce hai woh impact hoti hai aur yeh ek vicious cycle chalna shuru ho jaata hai. Toh is waqt ek Pakistan ek vicious cycle ke andar aaya hua hai. Um halaat tough hain but main hopeful hoon ke inshallah taala hum nikal jayenge isme se.
Chalein. I hope and we're going to we're going to go in deeper into that as well. Uh Shahzad, I'm going to bring you in. You've been ab yeh toh chalo ek economic blip hai. Um hopefully Aamir bhai ne bola ke you know hum nikal jayenge. Aaj aage nazuk mod pe aa gaye hain, phir wapas set ho jayenge. Aapka ek I think gaana bhi hai jo ke is baare mein baat karta hai. Um but you've been at it for a while and you've really seen Pakistan, peri-urban, rural, um particularly I believe education ke upar aap bohat focus the. What is your insight um on on some anecdotes or insight on really uh the masses of Pakistan and what they're going through right now?
Bohat hi loaded question. Uh but aap keh rahe the nazuk mod toh mujhe woh foreign lag raha hai, yaad aaya. And I was just thinking about that line that mujhe fikr yeh nahi ki yeh mulk kaise chalega, mujhe fikr yeh hai ki aise hi na chalta rahe. 100%. So um I think music ke zariye bhi aur um apni organization Zindagi Trust and now with Doorbeen, bohat kareeb se dekhne ko mauqa mila Pakistan ko, logon se milne ka mauqa mila. Aur um bohat saari aisi examples main aapko de sakta hoon jahan par mujhe seekhne ko mila, mujhe samajhne ko mila ke Pakistan ek bohat hi kamaal mulk hai. Is mulk ke andar log um uh baghair kisi aapko jaante bhi nahi honge aur agar aapka masla hoga toh jaan dene ke liye aa jayenge. Aur baghair kisi reason ke jaan lene ke liye bhi aa jayenge. So it's it's a very interesting, bohat hi you know aapko jazbaat nazar aayenge, emotions nazar aayenge. Uneven growth bohat zyada hai. Kamaal qisam ke hospitals aur buildings aapko nazar aayenge aur saath hi Karachi mein gutter khula hua hoga. So you see uneven growth also. Uh aaj kyunki aap discussion is pe kar rahe hain toh main isko sirf focus karte hue yeh baat share karna chahunga ke mujhe uh Aamir sahab uh se jab meri mulaqat hui aur baat hui, toh maine Unilever Unilever ke liye uh ek Knorr ke liye, Lifebuoy ke liye maine aur kuch aage peeche you know brand ko endorse kiya. Toh jab unhone mujhe kaha yaar Unilever ke liye toh main socha tha koi naya brand hoga. Toh main pucha, unhone kaha nahi yaar corporate Unilever ke liye hum kuch karne lag rahe hain. So aur pehle jab unhone mujhe fair living wage kaha na, toh as you said ke you know Pakistan dekhne ka itna mauqa mila hai, sab kuch. To be very honest, mujhe minimum wage ke baare mein pata tha. Hmm. Obviously fair living wage kaun iske liye nahi push karega. But mujhe pata nahi tha ke fair living wage ko aap implement kara sakte hain state ke andar aur usko convert kar sakte hain ek law mein, ek policy ke andar. Toh unhone phir mujhe samjhaya ke fair living wage because hamare yahan minimum wage hi nahi log dete hain. Hmm. Jo jo law kehta hai is mulk ka. Toh unhone kaha nahi Shahzad hum, main baar baar yeh fair living wage kehta tha, main minimum wage kehta tha. Phir unhone mujhe samjhaya gaya Shahzad, and woh ek itna interesting mere liye kuch arsa hamari baat cheet chalti rahi aur woh itna interesting mere liye tha, mere liye apne liye learning process tha. Ke fair living wage uh par yeh jo concept uh jo yeh keh rahe hain aur yeh keh rahe hain ke toh mujhe toh kyunki foreign kyunki humne is mulk mein jab um bachon ko maarne ka qanoon maine dekha, section 89 ke bachon ko good faith mein maara ja sakta hai. Toh zindagi ka maqsad ban gaya ke law change karna hai aur humne kar diya. Phir jab sexual abuse se bachon ko bachana tha toh LSB lagaya, pure Sindh ke curriculum mein chala gaya. Toh maine Aamir sahab ko, maine kaha sir yeh aap sab chodein yeh saari baatein. Dekhein main aapko batata hoon, aap yeh kar rahe hain na, aap let's you know hum advocacy karte hain. Main kehta hoon ke woh char A's ke baare mein main hamesha baat karta hoon. Woh pehla hota hai analysis, aap dekhte hain situation ko, phir aap action karte hain, you know law change karte hain, yeh karte hain. Phir aap usko baat phailane ke liye advocacy karte hain, you know change the mindset, you and then aakhir mein aap agitation ki taraf jaate hain. The way the corporate, obviously they will not go for it. Hum bhi kabhi agitation, aakhri waqt hota hai jab jaate hain. So maine toh unse kaha ke isko isko aap policy mein lekar aaye, minimum wage ko fair living wage. Toh unhone mujhe samjhaya Shahzad ke yahan par law se pehle um ek enabling environment create karna padega, ek critical mass create karna padega. Hum jaisi companies ko aage aana padega aur hum jab change karenge toh phir woh contagious banega. As we all say that goodness is contagious. Aur yeh log isliye nahi karenge kyunki logon ko um yeh ek koi social cause hoga unke liye. Yeh kyunki market woh kehte hain na aapki girlfriend, aapki ammi, aapka dost jo kaam nahi kara sakta aur competition kara deta hai. Hmm. So unhone kaha yeh competition ke zariye hum aur ek bohat zabardast scientific unhone mujhe analysis diya. So yahan se phir mujhe bada josh chadha aur maine kaha ke mujhe yeh uh is cheez mein involve hona hai aur retrospect maine agar main apne aap ko reflect karoon, so maine bilkul inse agree isliye kiya because hamare mulk mein jo logon ka mindset hai na um woh bada interesting hai. Ek aadmi aapke liye darwaza khol uh dega uh ghar ka ke pehle aap, buzurg pehle aap chale jayein. Lekin wahi buzurg jab gaadi mein ja raha hoga toh ladai karna shuru kar dega ke pehle kaise, tune mujhe kaat diya, yeh kaise kar diya. So I think woh ek understanding nahi hai, goodness hai, understanding nahi hai. Isi tarike se jab hum corporate punishment ka law change kar rahe the toh humne law toh change kar diya but main aksar yeh kehta hoon ki humne ek CFO ko invite kiya aur usne wahan par aakar kaha ke maine unse kaha ke hum yeh corporate punishment ka law change kiya ke ab bachon ko maar nahi sakenge. Unhone kaha yaar Shahzad sahab main aap se disagree karta hoon kyunki mere maa baap ne agar mujhe na maara hota na toh aaj main kabhi bhi CFO na banta. Toh maine kaha phir toh aapki pitai hoti rehni chahiye. Aap MD ban jayenge, board member ban jayenge. So but I realized ke law humne change kar diya but mindset abhi bhi wahi tha. Aur usme implementation ka bhi question mark hota hai na ke Pakistan mein laws toh ban jaate hain but how do you really make sure again? So minimum wage ka qanoon exist karta hai, har saal budget mein ek nayi minimum minimum wage aa jaati hai. Aap left right jayein, majority of the SME, until and unless you are very like hardcore SECP regulated uh corporate jisko jaake woh sara karna hai. Bilkul. Majority of your economy does not follow the basic fundamentals of. Main aapko ek badi basic si misaal deta hoon. Uh I think bottom of the food chain mein toh bechare yeh domestic workers aate hain. So this other day I was driving back home and uh there was this guy and and he had a wife and a kid and uh 11:30 PM. Woh mujhe road pe chalta hua nazar aaya, usne ek woh uh you know kapde ki woh bandhi hui thi aur uh bache ke ek stroller sa pakda hua tha. Um and maine gaadi dekha, mujhe realize hua ke yaar yeh kahan ja rahe hain itna saaman pakad ke. Pehle main aage nikal gaya, maine kaha security risk bhi ho sakta hai, yeh bhi ho sakta hai. Phir main kyunki recently Dubai move hua hoon toh I could feel with that couple ke ek couple hai, chota bacha hai, yeh pata nahi kidhar ja rahe hain itna saaman leke. Toh I turned around, I asked him ke kahan ja rahe ho? Usne kaha mera bari tak jaana hai. And we living, main naam nahi lunga but we living in a in a upper class Islamabad neighborhood, right? Toh maine khair usko gaadi mein bithaya, maine kaha aa jao. Usne kaha, maine kaha kyun aaye hue the? Woh, main ek naukri ke liye aaya hua tha, gaon mein bohat mehengai ho gayi hai, ab guzara nahi ho raha. Gaon mein guzara nahi ho raha, hum shehar aaye hain paise kamane ke liye. Maine aur begum ne kaam karna hai. Uh unse discussion hui, 11 logon ke liye begum ne khana banana hai, maine driveriya ka kaam karna hai aur unhone kaha ke woh dono ko 20,000 rupaye denge. Sir mera dimagh hi phat gaya. Kyunki us ghar ki na main minimum minimum agar 11 banda us ghar mein hai na toh minimum minimum unki jo net income hai woh 10 lakh se zyada hai. Aur woh do logon ko hire karna chaah rahe hain gaon se, young, proper woh kaam karenge. Unhone kaha subah se lekar raat tak full kaam karna hai aur woh usko 20,000 rupaye de rahe hain. That is less than the minimum wage for one person. Who regulates that? And again, I was just like, I mean obviously I felt bad, but I can't do anything about it, right? So the implementation part, how do you reconcile with that? I think ke jaise ke aapne badi interesting baat batayi ke you know aapne ek kahani sunayi ke isi tarah maine maa baap ko kahani sunate hue dekha hai ke bachon ko maarna bohat buri baat hai, hum sab kehte the aur pata chalta tha wohi bache maar dete the sab ko. So jo logon ke liye hum sochte hain na, I'm not saying ke aap minimum wage nahi de rahe, main phir koi yeh nahi keh raha. Main yeh keh raha hoon ke jo hum logon ke liye sochte hain na, kitni galat baat hai, asal mein hum kahin woh khud. So I think sab se pehle toh as Aamir zyada behtar explain karenge ke uh without changing any policy uh profit driven karke is pure idea ko aap isko contagious bana sakte hain. Aur phir jab aap yeh kar lenge, phir ek waqt aayega jahan par aap kahenge ke ab yeh ek law ki surat mein aana chahiye.
Achha, so you're saying first we need to push the public or the or the or the Interesting. So let's let's flip that. Uh Aamir because Shahzad has mentioned multiple times. Jo aapne unko magic explain kiya hai woh mujhe zara explain karein. Um you know what's the philosophy behind it? Um and and particularly this I find fairly interesting ke aapne kaha ke we're going to have the buy-in from the civil society and the public and the businessman rather than we're going to create a law, you know, woh kya kehlata hai aapka vanity metric ke liye ke dekho humne kitna kamaal kaam kar diya aur uska impact nahi hai. So you're going really ground up rather than top-down. Uh tell me more.
Correct. So dekhein uh law pass karana maqsad nahi hai. Maqsad yeh hai ke hum pure commercial basis ke upar main baat kar raha hoon. Main iski aapko ek live example dunga. 2013 ki baat thi. Us waqt mera transfer hua tha marketing se sales mein. Aur woh saal hamara bohat bura tha, sales hamari achi nahi hui thi. Um toh jab main aaya toh maine dekha yaar yeh hamari sales kyun itni achi nahi hui hain? Baaki toh market ke andar bade ache logon ne sale ki hain, jis se baat ki unhone kaha haan hamari sale toh badi achi hui hai, record sale hui hai. Toh hamari distributor sales hoti hain, woh takreeban koi 7-8 hazaar log hote hain. Woh hamari books pe nahi hote. Woh distributor ke employees hote hain. Toh jab maine pucha yaar yeh kitni inko tankhwa milti hai? Us waqt minimum wage thi koi 14,000 rupaye. 2013 ki main baat kar raha hoon. Toh unhone kaha ji 14, 12,700, 13,200. Maine kaha achha? Toh maine pucha yeh attrition rate kya hai hamara? Unhone kaha saalana 45 feesad. Maine kaha achha? Yani ke ek saal mein 45 feesad log chhod ke chale jaate hain, yani ke do saal ke andar 100% jo sales force hai woh nayi hai. 90 feesad log chhod ke chale gaye. Toh teesre saal jitni bhi aa rahe hain woh saare naye hain. Toh maine kaha yeh toh phir toh company ke paas toh koi uh hardcore talent hai hi nahi, hai hi nahi aur na koi experience hai. Uh kyunki loyalty hi nahi hai. Aur unhone kaha haan ji jisko 500 rupaye bhi koi offer karta hai woh dusre din udhar chale join kar leta hai. Hmm. Toh maine kaha achha toh yeh attrition toh bohat zyada hai. Toh aur uski wajah yeh hai ke unko paise bohat kam mil rahe hain. Achha, unhi dino mein maine ek case study padhi thi aur woh ek book thi, uska naam tha uh The Single Greatest The Single Great Business Decision of All Times. Uske andar story thi Henry Ford ki. 1913. Uh aur us waqt bada mashhoor hua tha Henry Ford ne Ford Motors ne Model T nikala tha. Badi sale thi uski. Aur itni sale thi ke usse puri nahi ho rahi thi. Achha, usse problem yeh tha woh usne jab check kiya ke masla kya aa raha hai toh pata chala ke ji 45% se 50 feesad log usko chhod ke chale jaate hain. Kyunki jo market ke andar jo us waqt per day jo wage rate tha woh 2.5 dollar tha. Toh usne kaha yaar mujhe toh retain karna hai because yeh toh knowledge industry hai, mujhe toh toh usne kya kiya ke next day 5 dollar kar di. Achha 5 dollar kar di toh puri industry automobile industry ne kaha ke yeh pagal ho gaya hai insaan, yeh apni business band kar dega. Hua kya ke woh jab jab 5 dollar ki toh uska jo attrition rate hai woh uth ke 40-45% se zero ke upar aa gaya. Uska experience logon ka badh gaya aur uski productivity chhat se lag gayi. Aur Model T became the highest selling model in 1915. As a consequence because aur he made that year 10 million US dollar. Aur usne kaha ke yaar mere bande itne paise kamana chahiye ke jo gaadi bana rahe hain woh meri gaadi khareed sakein. Nahi toh kya fayda hua? Ke gaadi bana raha hai woh khareed nahi sakta toh woh ideally lifetime ke andar gaadi khareedni chahiye. Aur usne itna profit banaya aur itni sales ki aur 5 dollar bhi kar di, usne double kar di toh whole industry has reverse left with no choice because they saw ke yeh toh commercial case hai. They followed the suit aur puri industry ki jo hai na 5 dollar ho gayi. Aur woh overall pie size bhi badhata raha, pie size bhi badhata raha. Achha dono taraf benefit ho gaya. Company ne bhi benefit kiya aur logon ne bhi benefit kiya. Right. Toh maine kaha yaar yeh toh bada achha hai, main bhi karke dekhta hoon. Yaar dekho yeh hota bhi hai ke nahi hota. Toh maine kaha yaar yeh jitni bhi hamari sales force hai na inki jo hai na salary hum double karte hain 3 saal ke andar. Main foreign toh nahi kar sakta, 3 saal mein karte hain. Toh mera jo finance ka business partner hai, usne kaha ke business risk kya hai? Zara worksheet toh karke dikhayein. Maine kaha mere paas worksheet toh nahi hai. But mera assumption hai ke isse, haan attrition rate gir jayega. Right. Toh hamare paas experienced log honge jo hamari productivity badha denge. Right. Toh khair humne ek saal kiya, us saal humne 40 feesad badhayi. Second year humne kuch aur karna chahiye toh humne second year kya kiya ke hum gaye uske paas, maine tera maara aur kya masla hai? Usne kaha ji mera jo hai na woh dawai ka bohat masla hai aur koi bimaar ho jaye na mere paas phir mujhe karza lena padta hai. Toh ek company hai Naya Jeevan. Right. Humne unse baat ki, unhone kaha ji yeh jitne bhi 5-6 hazaar log hain, inki responsibility hum lete hain. Hum inka ek bohat hi ek achha hum log package nikalenge, inka inki biwi ka, unke bachon ka medical bill hum denge. Uske monthly aap 600-700 rupaye. Effectively ek ek ek ek private insurance type ban gayi for them. Correct. Right. Toh humne kaha bhai yeh tumhara card hai, jab bimaar ho gaye card dikhana tumhe pay nahi karna hoga. Right. Woh bada khush hua. Teesre saal humne kaha yaar kuch aur bhi karna chahiye. Toh teesre saal humne kya kiya, humne kaha yaar tumhare maa baap hain? Usne kaha haan. Humne kaha yaar uski medical hum denge aur bachon ka education because woh kaafi toh bachon ko bhejte hi nahi the kyunki woh afford hi nahi kar sakta tha. Hmm. Yeh kaam humne 3 saal kiya. Total humne jo paise daale the 100 million rupaye daale the. Un 3 saal ke andar humne 60 saal mein utni sale nahi ki jitni humne un 3 saal mein double kar di sale. Aur hamara attrition aa gaya 422%. So it's a pure commercial case. When you look after people, they look after you. Hmm. Aur woh dedicated hote hain. They bring the best to the workplace because unke jitne bhi pareshaniyan hain, ab aapne kaha yaar tumhari pareshani meri pareshani hai. Tumhara kharcha ikhrajat ho gaye, tumhare uh sehat ka khayal ho gaya, tumhare bachon ki padhai ho gayi, tumhare maa baap ki uh dawa ho gayi. Aur humne yeh dekha ke yaar yeh toh bada zabardast business model hai. Hmm. It works. Yeah. Morality ko chhod do, commercial case hai. And I think so that's the whole idea ke jab ab hum aa gaye hain basically ek company level aur hum logon ne kaha yaar hamare paas 17,000 log hain aur humne unko fair living. Achha us waqt mujhe fair living wage ke baare mein nahi pata tha.
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So jo minimum wage hota hai, jo fair living wage hota hai, so ek there is a network called Fair Living Wage Network. Okay. Yeah. Uh duniya ka network hai, unka kaam yeh hota hai ke woh har city ka uh calculate karte hain ke cost of living kya honi ho hai. Right. Toh un logon ne pure Pakistan ke andar by city calculate ki hui hai. Purchasing power ki basis ke upar. Purchasing power, cost of living, rent kitna hota hai. So sab se zyada is waqt Karachi Pakistan ke andar jo cost of living high hai woh aapke shehar mein hai. 57,000 rupees.
ve hai. Karachi aur Lahore ki 50,000 rupay aur rest of Pakistan 40,000 rupay. Karachi aur Lahore is same. I would have assumed Karachi would be cheaper. 50,000, 51,000. Islamabad is 57,000 and rest of Pakistan is around 40,000 rupees. Okay. And this includes rural urban ya rural ki thodi si kam hogi? Rest of Pakistan ke andar le le, rural kam hogi thodi. 35,000 hogi. Islamabad waise bhi thoda sa Pakistan se door hai. Aise hi hai. Main toh kehta hoon yeh shehar nahi hai, yeh alag mulk hai. Toh toh yeh basically aur poori idea hai ki inflation adjustment hoti hai iske andar ki jaise jaise inflation aa rahi hoti hai, woh revise ho rahi hoti hai because inflation adjusted hai. Minimum wage inflation adjusted nahi hai. Theek? Toh maine aapko bataya hai ki 1969 ke andar jo first time minimum wage set ki gayi, woh 1400 rupay thi. 1993 tak kabhi isme revision nahi aaya. 31 saal. Aur kis tarah kiya ki ek basically cost of living allowance relief act 1973 ke mutabiq woh aapas mein mil baith ke woh koi cost of living allowance de dete, 100 rupay, tumhe mahine ka de diya. 31 saal usme revision nahi aayi. Yeah. Toh koi proper koi tareeqa kaar hi nahi tha. Toh jo fair living wage hai aur hamari minimum wage hai, is waqt isme taqreeban koi 1.8 times to 2 times plus ka farq hai aur minimum wage set ki jaati hai ek uske andar ek inflation adjustment ya real cost of living ko calculate nahi kiya jaata as compared to fair living wage ko. Yeh ek difference hai. Aur hamara kehna yeh hai ki dekhein char qisam ki organizations hain. Ek organization hai jo ki willing hai aur able hai. Woh chaah bhi rahi hai ki haan logon ko paise fair living milni chahiye aur woh de bhi sakti aur woh dena chahti bhi hai aur de bhi sakti hai. Right. Ek hai willing but unable. Woh chahti hai ki yaar mere workers ko achhe paise mile. But keh raha hai yaar mera jo business model hai main itni kamai nahi kar paata but meri chaahat hai. Jis din main kama loonga us din doonga main. Startup type hoon main. Theek hai. Teesra hai woh unwilling hai aur unable hai. Right. Na usko uske baare mein pata hai, na usko is cheez ke koi intention hai aur uski saqat bhi nahi hai kaam karne ki. Right. Aur chautha hai jo ki basically unwilling hai aur able hai. Right. De sakta hai magar keh raha hai dena nahi hai. Haan. Theek. Yeh char qisam ki hain. Hamara kehna yeh hai aur Unilever Pakistan ne ek pledge liya hai ki 2025 tak jitni bhi hamari total 17,000 log hain aur hamari books pe sirf isme se 1,000 log hain. 16,000 saare third party contractual hain. So legally mere Unilever par koi koi skew, koi koi compliance ka issue nahi hai. But hamara hai ki yaar 2025 tak we will take everyone to a fair living wage. Yeah. Because we are willing and we are able but humne bhi ek road map rakha hai ki hum over a three year time period karenge because iska jo ticket size hai bahut zyada hai. Toh uska poora ek program hai, humne McKinsey ko on board liya hua hai, woh hamara cost transformation kar rahi hai. Woh is wajah se kar rahi hai ki yaar cost hum log nikalenge aur over the years hum journey ko lekar chalenge. So hamara saal taqreeban pe kehte hain ki yaar pichle saal maine start kiya tha toh 20 se 25 lekar gaye the, abhi hum 35 lekar chale gaye hain. Is agle 6 mahine mein 40. Toh hum over three years hum 55, 60 jo bhi us waqt fair living wage hoga us waqt woh karenge. So hum keh rahe hain we want to be an ethically compliant company, not legally compliant company. Aur hamara messaging bhi yahi hai ki you know you carve out your own road map. A year, two, three, five year. But first have a realization, kahin se toh start karo. And of course do it economically. Achha jab aapki realization hogi toh phir aap karne karne ki koshish karenge toh aap paise bhi dhoond lenge. Without any compromise of your profits and that's also I'm saying. You can do this without any compromise of profit because this is not a cost. This is an investment. Yeah, because when you invest in people, they help you increase the productivity. Toh humne yeh dekha ki jab maine 2013 mein sab kuch kiya, actually maine lagaye 100 million aur mere khayal mein unhone humein arbon rupay kama ke diye. Yeah. So that's the whole idea. Yeah. Jahan tak law pass karana hai woh toh bahut ki baad ki baat hai ki jab multiple organizations isko experiment karke is cheez mein believe karenge haan yaar yeh commercially viable hai aur ab kaafi organizations hain, Bank Alfalah hai, Punjab Bank hai, Jazz hai, yeh sab kar rahi hain because they believe ki yaar prosperity jo hoti hai na woh share karne se badhti hai. Prosperity jo hai na woh kabhi bhi apne had tak mehdood karke nahi badhti hai. That's the whole philosophy. Extractive nahi ho sakti na, it has to be a win-win. Aur agar hogi bhi toh woh basically ek times bound hogi. Right. Woh perpetual nahi hogi. Right. Bubble hogi woh. Aapko aisa lagega ki main kama raha hoon but all of a sudden one fine day someone will prick the bubble. And it disappears. Makes sense. Shahzad, why is it so important though? Again, I mean it's a no-brainer, it is important. But just for context, if you can get closer to the mic, I'm trying to get some some sense of beyond the money, right? So it's money, money buys you products. Beyond the money, why is I mean you've worked on education a lot and we've spoken about education extensively on the podcast, one of the highest amount of out of school children. Hum mujhe you know recently I've taqreeban 350 different logon se baat kar chuka hoon different industries mein. Main unse jab bhi poochta hoon na ki Pakistan ke baare mein aapka kya hai, future ko aap kaise dekhte hain toh woh kehte hain dekhein ji Pakistan mein bahut potential hai. Pakistan ki youth population 65% hai aur aap kehte ho ki yaar us youth population ko jo aap banayenge woh nikale gi, right? Like just having humans doesn't do anything. Your biggest strength today will be your biggest weakness tomorrow because these will be unproductive, inherently uncivilized because you didn't provide them with the basic infrastructure and education. But for a lot of people they don't have that context. Shehron mein reh rahe hain, zyada tar viewer hai woh shehron mein reh raha hai, usko itna idea hi nahi hai. Woh keh rahe hain theek hai pehle bhi aise hi chalta tha, gaon jo hai woh aise hi rahega, hum aise hi rahenge. Do you think ki yeh sustainable hai agar hum without realizing the human development part that Aamir mentioned early on, how important is that? Why do we need to have more equality? Ismein jo main khaas kar karunga na, I was in Dubai at the time last month. The most shocking imagery for me was in the same week there were people standing in the lines of 2400 rupees aate ka bag and dying and in the same week 1200 rupay ki coffee peene ke liye log Tim Hortons ke bahar khade hue the. That means two people standing together were effectively spending the same amount that a family wanted wheat for and they were dying for it. It was mind-numbing for me. Like it was it was like how is this possible? How is this being how is this okay as a society? Yeh humein andar se chills kyun nahi woh kar raha? Why do you think it's so important? Dekhein hota yeh hai ki yeh uneven growth as I said before. So aap yahan dekhein, kahin aur dekhein, comparison yahan ka bahar ke saath karein and you rightly said ki youth hai woh toh you know uske liye kuch karna and you know it's like it's like converting your human resource into human capital. So woh toh bahut zaroori hai. Education bahut integral part play karta hai uske andar. Main isko aise dekhta hoon ki charity jo hoti hai, jab aap kisi ka bhala karna chahte hain toh us bhala karne mein aap kuch arse baad bore ho jaate hain. Phir aap sub-standard ki taraf chale aate hain aur phir aap kehte hain something is better than nothing. Main bade arse se yeh keh raha hoon ki jab humne education reforms shuru kiya tha toh main yeh kehta tha ki log mujhe kehte the something is better than nothing yaar. Chalein aap kuch toh karein, kuch toh ho raha hai. Aur jaise aapne abhi aap kehne lage the ki itne bachhe you know you were about to say ki itne bachhe school se bahar bhi hain hamare mulk ke andar. Toh humne yeh kehna shuru kiya hai ki we are worried about children who are not going to school in Pakistan. But we are more worried about children who are going to state schools in Pakistan. Because they spend 10 years. Unki koi critical thinking nahi hoti, kuch bhi develop nahi hota aur 10 saal baad koi skill bhi nahi seekha hota aur woh samajhte hain ki humne kuch padha likha hai ab humein naukri milegi aur usko naukri nahi milti. Toh yeh jo ek poora mindset hai ki jo hum kehte hain na humein kyun kuch nahi hota aur hum hota hai, kitni charity hoti hai is mulk mein. Tabdeeli halanki hum charitable organization chalate hain but I always tell people ki yeh hum reforms kar rahe hain. Hai toh charitable organization. So reforms se society tabdeel hoti hai. Kyunki woh jo main keh raha tha na something is better than nothing toh woh sub-standard education jo hoti hai, health care jo hoti hai main yeh kehta hoon woh insaan ko maar deti hai aur sub-standard education jaisi koi cheez hi nahi hoti. Toh yeh bada zaroori hai ki hum ek intellectual kick rakhein society ki development mein. Agar yeh kick missing hogi toh aap dekhenge kabhi bhi society is tarah se change nahi hoti aur state, industries yahi society ko bade level par phir aakar change karte hain. Jab humne education reform kiya so hamare liye sabse bada masla kya tha? Humne kaha ki yaar yeh ek bachha itna confused hai aur kyunki hard core underprivileged area mein hum government schools theek kar rahe the. Humne kaha bachha itna confuse hai ki yeh jab paida hota hai Pakistan ke andar toh ghar mein woh Gujarati, Sindhi koi aisi zabaan bolta hai. Jab school jaata hai toh usko Urdu sikhate hain, woh Urdu bolta hai. Phir jab woh padh ke bahar nikalta hai toh usko naukri ke liye angrezi mein khat likhna hota hai. Phir jab woh dua karta hai Allah mein aise ki naukri mil jaaye toh woh Arabic mein karta hai. Toh woh bechara humein achha hamare liye yeh tha ki hum start kahan se karein? You know more jo bachhe ki zabaan hoti hai woh toh mother tongue hoti hai, ismein kaunsi development hoti hai? Toh humein laga ki hum yeh sab kar nahi sakte, hum bachhe ko sabse bada masla hai ki usko khush kaise rakhein jab yeh school aaye. Yeh khush hoga toh kuch hoga. Toh humne saari education side pe kar di. Humne kaha yeh toh state school mein theek karna, kitabein halanki ab hum sab kar chuke hain, poore mulk mein policy change kar chuke hain. But us waqt humein samajh nahi aa raha tha. Toh humne us bachhe ko kitabein tabein sab ke saath jo padh raha tha woh saara rote learning pe base tha, humein sab nazar aa raha tha but we didn't go to initially nahi gaye. Humne usko chess khelne de diya. Humne usko football de diya. I got one of the best football coaches, chess players, Pakistan ke jo top log hain. Humne chess padhana shuru kar diya, all learning modules. Bachha khush. Usko maza aana shuru ho gaya. Kya hua maza aane se? As Aamir said ki hamare log khush hue, ki hamari hamara stress nahi, woh kaam pe aa rahe the khush. Aur inka profit itna badh gaya. Ab main ajeeb sa comparison hai ki yahan jab bachha khush hua toh is mulk ki national champion 2014 mein chess ki hamare government school ki thi. Achha. Karachi ke andar jo sabse zabardast achhe school hain jaise American school hai, Karachi Grammar school hai, angrezi math mein toh nahi us waqt hara sakte the. Football champions Karachi Grammar, American school ko jo haraya aur map pe aate the school woh hamara hua government school. So bachha jaise hi khush hua, usne excel karna shuru kar diya. So yeh bahut important hota hai ki ek insaan ka jo state of mind hota hai, chahe woh kaam pe aa raha ho, chahe woh school ja raha ho, uska khush hona bahut zaroori hai. Humne then decide kiya ki yaar yeh hamara bachha khush hai, hamare teacher khush nahi hain. So then uske liye humne bahut efforts kiye, abhi hum licensing lekar aa rahe hain aur bahut saari cheezein. So I'm just saying ki mindset agar aap usko neki ka rakhenge sirf toh usse aap excellence nahi achieve kar paate. Toh neki ke saath saath kyunki hum hum hamare mulk mein itni charity hoti hai toh usko sirf channelize karna bahut zaroori hota hai aur main hamesha kehta hoon ki hamari neki ki jo expiry date hoti hai na woh 29wa ya 30wa roza hota hai. Us din expire ho jaati hai. Phir toh main lekin main samajhta hoon yeh fair minimum wage, fair living wage jo hai yeh poora saal aapki neki expire nahi hone degi. Apart from jo businessman hoga, na sirf uske liye profit hai iske andar, na sirf uske log khush hain, balki woh waqai logon ki zindagi ko impact kar raha hai foran. So mujhe jab Aamir sahab ne baat batai thi na hamari bahut lambi debate hoti rahi but jab mujhe samajh aayi toh I thought ki yaar yeh itna bada impact create karegi aur maine shuru mein bhi kaha ki goodness achhi aur buri dono cheezein contagious hoti hain. And I have no doubt in my mind that they bahut jaldi uh impose kiye baghair, push kiye baghair aap dekhiyega yeh policy change hogi. Jab yeh saare businessman, companies, corporate apna profit badhane ke liye aur phir saath saath neki toh hai hi, jab change karenge. Interesting. Ismein agar if I were to ask you one other thing and this has been on my mind for a while. You talked about charity. Um and I've seen people we you know yeh mera again ek anecdotal bahut zyada woh hai. I've seen people have this argument with a rehrri wala ki yaar yeh kele ko 30 rupay kam karo and then go and give that uh road ke thoda aage jaake 500 rupay de diya and suddenly feel great about the fact ki yaar dekho zara maine apni jannat ka darwaza jo hai woh khulwa liya hai. Um principally yes, charity is great, everything. Uh but in a lot of ways you know when we proudly say that we are the most charitable nation in the world, I would generally look at or analyze that by ki before the charity, what are you doing in your business dealings? What are you doing in terms of jo actually bechara mehnat kar raha hai, uske saath aap kitne fair hain? Um aapne bhi channelization ki baat ki. Very interesting. Personally mera hamesha yeh raha hai, pehle I was different, eventually maine yeh karna shuru kar diya tha ki mujhe tha ki agar maine charity deni hai toh maine education ko deni hai ya maine health ko deni hai aur maine directly kisi idaray ko deni hai because woh optimized hoga bajaye iske ki main individuals ko karoon. Um aur usmein you know TCF was for me was a no-brainer toh maine unko dena shuru kar diya ki yaar aapka ek pata hai ki mahine ka ja raha hai us tareeqe se. Um aur doosra agar maine individuals ko dena tha toh dena what I started to do was ki I started to uh raise the uh jo mere house staff hai maine unki woh badhayi. When I was very interesting hai ki maine health daal di. Hamare paas insurance toh hum nahi kar sakte the, ghar ka woh tha. Toh humne kaha yaar tumhara zindagi mein ghar walon ka kabhi bhi koi health ka masla aayega toh tum mere paas aana. Achha yeh badi interesting baat hai ki every person, mere khandan ka har banda, mere cousin aate hain, mere dost yaar aate hain, yaar tumhara banda jaata kyun nahi hai tumhare paas se? Aur woh jis tarah mera khayal rakhta hai, woh literally goli khane ke liye ready hai. Ke Muzammil bhai ke liye woh mujhe I was going to Dubai toh someone came in and they asked my driver ki achha toh aapka kya scene hai na woh ja rahe hain? Toh unhone kaha agar mujhe koi maar hi de ya mujhe drag karke lekar jaaye toh main inko chhodunga, main toh nahi chhodne wala kyunki uska ek connection mere bhaiyon ki tarah woh ban gaya. Um but in a lot of ways what people in Pakistan unfortunately do is that they don't differentiate between these things ki yaar ek banda mehnat kar raha hai, uski jo mehnat hai usko incentivise karo taake woh mazeed mehnat kare. Woh usko disincentivise karte hain by bargaining, by really sucking them dry aur jo bilkul faarigh baitha hua hai woh usko jaake incentivise karte hain ki yaar tum faarigh aa rahe ho ishare ke upar toh yeh lo paise aur tum aur faarigh baithe raho. Um how do you reconcile with that considering you earlier said about charity? Thodi si uh complicated conversation hai because log touchy touchy hoti hai thodi si. Um but what do you think about that? As I said before, charities kabhi bhi mulk change nahi karti aur yeh wohi hum dobara usi pe aa jayenge mindset ki baat hai yeh. Kyunki mujhe maza aa raha hai yeh karne mein isliye main charity yahan doonga, mujhe maza aa raha hai yeh karne mein isliye meri mujhe satisfaction mil rahi hai yahan se. Usse uska toh impact nahi ho raha na. Uski life aapne khud kaha thele wale se aap usko paise kam kara rahe hain aur chhod dein coffee peena. Wohi paisa woh itna zyada kahin aur charity mein de denge but us aadmi ka jo khoon pasine ki kamai hai usmein bargain nahi karenge. Usmein usko le. So again it's a mindset. So aapka mindset jab change hota hai, aap dekhein duniya ke andar jo modern world change hua hai woh kyun change hua hai? Question it's not just about education. Right. It's about sawaal karne ki salahiyat develop karna bachon ke andar. Jab aap sawaal karne ki salahiyat develop karte hain aur aap ek basic baat kehte hain ki tolerance nahi, aap tolerate nahi karein, co-exist karein society mein. So yeh kuch basic cheezein hain jo shuru se aati hain toh jab aap bade hote hain toh aapka ek typical woh nahi hota ki yaar main mujhe yeh karne se achha lag raha hai, mujhe phir aap bahut scientifically cheezon ko dekhte hain ki main kyun yahan par toh aapki charity bahut meaningful ho jaati hai. Aap duniya mein jitne bade bade billionaires hain, inki charity aap kitni meaningful unhone ki hai. Hamare yahan log bahut charity karte hain, mere ammi abbu karte hain but galat direction mein kar rahe hote hain. Mujhe yeh main baar baar unse kehta hoon ki apne employees ko paise dena sabse pehla kaam hai. Unko sahi paise dena sabse pehla kaam hai. Uska bachha school ja raha hai ya nahi ja raha hai, yeh doosra kaam hai. Teesra kaam hai kya uska bachha utni hi achhi education le pa raha hai jo ki aapka apna bachha le raha hai? Yeh nahi education de. Again sub-standard something is better than nothing. Chalo kuch toh. Jab hum is mindset se nikal aayenge na, woh sub-standard tab hamare mulk mein inventions bhi hongi, hamare mulk mein meaningful charity bhi hogi, hamari zabaan bhi survive karegi, hamara mulk bhi aage jayega. Again it's it's a battle of mindset. And it's very interesting that you mentioned look around you first. Sort of similar to ki ji hum jaake law change nahi karwa rahe, hum pehle keh rahe hain ki you know can we mobilize the community, look around ourselves, apne drawing room mein baith ke, Islamabad mein baith ke, Sindh ke masail ki baat na karein, mujhe batayein Islamabad ke masail kis tarah solve ho sakte hain. Um and that's very interesting. From business point of view, obviously I mentioned earlier on the as well, it is inherently tough to implement something like this. Cultural shift hai, bahut massive cultural shift hai aur for most people aapne ek kitaab padhi, usse aapka dimag khula, it's a concept of abundance, right? Ke stop worrying about chawanni and start thinking about abundance and the abundance will come back to you. Um but practically speaking, how do you see it panning out? Um aapne woh char unka zikr kiya, you know usmein particularly mere liye yeh hota hai ki jab hum is tarah ki conversations karte hain, let's say popularize bhi ho jaati hain, toh usmein contextless mein bada problem aa jaata hai. Context ismein main add karunga jis tarah startups hain. Um so kaafi dafa aapko online log milenge startups ko attack karte hue, jab corporate jo hai woh internship ke upar 8-8 hazaar rupay de raha hai. Um aapko lawyers hain, dentists hain, jo bade specialized log hain, jo ki jo hai ji free of cost logon ko utha rahe honge ya woh kar rahe honge, kahenge apprenticeship apprenticeship ke khaate mein kar rahe honge. How do you reconcile with all of these things and how do you make it happen? Theek hai, let's say ki aapne kaha ki society ka mindset toh shift kar liya, um but practically how do you make them become a believer? Dekhein uh main by profession marketeer hoon. So uh brand building jab ki jaati hai na uske andar sabse pehli jo cheez hoti hai woh hoti hai awareness. Ki maine aap tak yeh awareness phailani hai ki yaar main exist karta hoon. Uske baad basically maine aapko convince karna hai jisko hum kehte hain buying intention. Ki yaar main exist toh karta hoon magar main tumhare liye mufeed bhi hoon toh tum mujhe khareed lo. Aur phir woh khareedne ke baad woh jo gaahak hai woh decide karta hai ki yaar maine yeh khareedte rehna hai ki nahi, yaar yeh trial toh kiya maza nahi aaya, I'll switch. Toh jis stage ke upar hum abhi hain, abhi toh hum sirf awareness phaila rahe hain ki yaar yeh actually fair living wage ka concept kya hai, uski ideology kya hai? Shahzad ne bhi jis tarah baat ki hai ki Iske pehle to ideology nahi pata thi, har koi kehta tha minimum wage hai, sahi hai. To pehle to abhi to hum awareness phaila rahe hain ki iski ideology kya hai aur uske peeche main kya hai. Main yeh dekhein hamare jaise mulk jo hain na, hum log kehte hain hamari GDP is saal 0.3% hogi. Achha jis din saalon mein 7, 8, 9% bhi thi, to humne kya kamaal kar diya? Is aitebaar se ki aaj hamari jo achha ek to GDP hai. Doosra jo concept hai woh HDI ka hai jo ki human development index hai jismein teen cheezein measure hoti hain. Ek cheez measure hoti hai ki the how long you live and how healthy you live. Doosra metric jo uske andar calculate hota hai woh hota hai ki aapki jo health care hai woh kaisi hai. Second hota hai aapki education, aapka means, your number of years schooling mein kitna raha hai. Aur third hai aapki standard of living. Yeh teen cheezein measure hoti hain. Aaj hum agar human development index Pakistan ka dekhein to jo latest jo ranking hai out of 184 countries we are 161. Aur aaj se teen saal pehle hum 150 thay. Aur South Asia mein hum sabse lowest hain. Human development index hai ki aapki jo wealth hai woh kitni spread out hai. GDP hoti hai ki woh aapki jo wealth hai woh kitni concentrated hai. So few people are getting richer by the day, to aapki GDP zyada achhi aa gayi. Unhone aur zyada paise bana liye, paanch guna, 10 guna, 20 guna. But distribution of wealth nahi hui. Achha distribution of wealth nahi hui to standard of living bhi behtar nahi hua. Standard of living behtar nahi hua to yeh saari jo baatein Shahzad kar rahe hain, country ki character building bhi nahi hui. Logon ne shortcut dhoondhne shuru kar diye. Log bahut zyada personally vested ho gaye ki yaar maine apna kaam karna hai, mujhe community ki fikr nahi hai. Aur zahiri baat hai jab aapka practically jo hai na woh pata nahi hai ki subah khaunga, shaam ko milega nahi to aap apne hi pet ka khayal karenge na. To as a nation, humein basically kaafi mukhtalif concepts ko pehle introduce karana hai. So hum jis level ke upar hain, hum awareness ke upar hain for the rest of the world. But Unilever ke andar hum awareness ke upar nahi hain, hum logon ne ek yeh safar shuru kar diya hai. Hum doosre saal mein aur inshaAllah kaafi pur-umeed hain ki agle do se dhai saal ke andar inshaAllah hum apne hadaf tak pahunch jayenge. Aur do saal nahi, teen saal nahi, to chaar saal mein pahunch jayenge. Safar shuru kar diya hai. Aur doosron ko bhi hamari messaging yahi hai ki aap niyat to karein. Aur uske baad aapka aage implementation aa jayegi and there is a way to do it. Aur uske baad hamare paas road map bhi hai. For example, I can actually give the road map as well how to do it. What's the road map? Dekhein ji pehla jo road map hai na woh hai ki hamein apni companies ki, so agar Pakistan ko dekhein aur basic practically aap economically dekhein, agar hum productivity benchmarking karein, we are one of the lowest productive countries in the world as a business. Right. Hum ya pass efficiency hai hi nahi. So pehla to yeh hai ki aapne practically apne aap ko productive karna hai aur benchmarking karni hai with the best in the world. Because agar aapne duniya mein jeetna hai, even as an exporter aapne duniya mein jeetna hai to aapne share competitiveness ke upar jeetna hai. Aaj hamara problem yeh hai ki hum to bahut zyada export ke andar subsidies le rahe hote hain government se. Uski basis ke upar hum costing karte hain competitive to win the order in the world. Agar woh aaj subsidy nikal diya jaye to kya aap practically basic businesses ke upar kya aap competitive hain? To pehle to aapne productivity jab aap badhayenge to automatically aapke paas room niklega to pay well to your people. That's number one. Number two yeh maine is tarah kaha ki jaise ab aap jis tarah aap logon ka khayal rakhenge, aap unko de-stress karenge. Woh khush honge to absenteeism kam hogi to your productivity will further go up. So again, so do concepts hain, ek hai efficiency aur ek productivity. Efficiency kya hai? Efficiency yeh hai, kam logon se utna hi kaam nikalwana. So aap kahenge yaar 100 log hain, ek kaam karo 80 log nikalwa do aur basically 80 logon se kaam kara lo. Productivity kya hai? Utne hi logon se zyada kaam karwana. So humein productivity laane ki zaroorat hai. Doosra jo tareeqakar yeh hai, once we get productive, theek hai, hum government ko jaake bolein ki yaar yeh practically minimum wage nahi de rahe. Yeh chaah rahe hain ki hum fair living wage dein. Aap unko tax credit dein. So agar aaj aap corporate tax inse 29% lete hain ya 35% lete hain, theek hai, aur aap tax isi wajah se lete hain na ki aap awaam ke upar jaake lagayein. To aap awaam ke haath mein paise dein itne ki woh apna khayal khud kar sakein. Aapko subsidies na deni padein utility stores ke upar wahan pe. Aap uske haath mein de dein paise taake utility stores ke upar jo itni lambi lambi linein lagti hain ki yahan pe sasta aata mil raha hai, aap uske haath mein dein uski fair income dein. Achha, just to understand. What you're saying is we're not saying ki ek flat line lagayein. We're saying ki aap jo aapne chaar draw kiye thay, aapne kaha ki ji based on profitability, main uski fair living wage ko gauge karoon. So for example, koi profitable company nahi hai, woh agar abhi is waqt kar rahi hai, logon se keh rahi hai, buy and le rahi hai ki yaar dekho tum aage saste mein kaam kar lo. Agar tumhare paas istitaat hai, tumhari kar lo aur hum mil-mila ke paisa banayenge, jaise hi paisa banna shuru ho jayega hum tumhe paise de denge. So there, that's okay. So that's interesting because that's a much more feasible model in terms of economic growth versus the other one. Interesting. But dekhein iske andar bahut zaroori hai ki trust element kitna hai between employee and the employer. Ki agar employer usko keh raha hai ki yaar main paise banaunga to main de doonga, theek hai, to employee samajhta hai ki haan yaar mera jo employer hai woh waqai sach bol raha hai, waqai paise nahi banata. To iske andar trust element ki bahut zyada zaroorat hai between the employee and the employer. And iske andar ek yeh bhi zaroorat hai ki government jo hai woh real businesses ko properly ghuse aur tax kare aur aur tax kare aur usko credit de ki achha yaar tum agar jo hai minimum requirement milti hai aur agar tum living wage de rahe ho, 20-25 hazaar rupaye upar de rahe ho to yaar main tumhe tax credit de deta hoon taake main tumhari bhi madad karta hoon taake tum unko fair living wage de sako taake woh apne haathon se jo hai na ilaaj kara sakein, unko charity hospital mein line mein na lagna pade. Unko charity schools mein na jaana pade. Woh apne jisko hum kehte hain na aapki apni izzat-e-nafs majrooh na ho. Aap unko unki fair income dein taake woh apna ilaaj khud kara sakein, woh apne achhe bachon ko khud achhe school mein bhej sakein. Woh khud apne ghar ke andar ek achha living standard nutritious food le sakein. Yeh ek poora ek concept hai. Achha ab aap bolein ki yaar yeh to bahut hi philosophical hai, yeh to bahut hi yeh to ek ideology hai. Aisa nahi hai, yeh practically for example Australia ki example lete hain. Australia ke andar human development index ke upar Australia jo hai na number 8 hai. With a 2 trillion of our GDP. On the contrary China with a 15 trillion of our GDP, woh HDI ke andar kahin zyada low hai. Because wahan pe woh distribution of wealth us tarah nahi hai jo ki Australia ke andar ho rahi hai. So yeh ek nizam hai. Aapko ek nizam banana padta hai, aapko usko phir nizam ko chalana padta hai. But us nizam ko manane ke liye logon tak aapko pehle unko yeh shaoor dena padta hai ki yeh karne ki zaroorat hai. Aur main khayal mein Shahzad bhi jo baat kar raha hai ki education ke andar maine usko uski madri zabaan mein usko padhana hai ya usko maine Urdu mein padhana hai ya English mein padhana hai ya Arabic mein padhana hai. Main mindset ke upar kaam karna hai aur uski woh skill develop karni hai ki jahan pe woh de-stress ho aur woh apni best capability ko lekar aa sakein. And I think so that's the whole idea. Ki how we actually build the overall ecosystem that where both employee and employer trust each other and then they work for each other. Aur hum yeh apne paas dekh rahe hain aur yeh hamein bada humne to hamare hamare paas to real life case hai aur humne isko maine to personally I'm a practitioner. Theek hai, I've personally experimented it, I've seen it, it works. And it will work. Yeh koi rocket science nahi hai. Aapne kisi ko de-stress kar diya to woh ab aapke liye apni jaan dene ke liye tayyar hai. Agar woh stressed out hai to na woh productivity achhi dega. Har waqt doosri jagah pe naukri dhoondh raha hoga, distracted hoga, theek hai, bahane dhoondhega chhutti maanne ke, theek hai, ya ghar pe har waqt pareshani hogi. So that's the whole ideology to do it. Is there any study that you guys have done that breaks down, jis tarah aapne Islamabad ka KLI ka to aapne bataya 57,000, 51,000, 54,000. Um baaki bhi shehar hain, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Sialkot, so on and then you know district level ke upar. A, is there a study that you've done and B, is there can you create a portal of sorts um ki let's say unilever.com/fairlivingwage jahan par jaakar aap actually identify kar sakte hain ki um you know what's what's the benchmarking? So what doable hai aur achhi baat yeh hai ki ab hamare paas koi 8, 9, 10 aur companies hain, theek hai, jinhone hamara group join kar liya hai. Yeah. Aur I don't want to brand as a Unilever thing. Yeh to ek community work hai. Aur unhone bhi is main isko movement kehta hoon. Theek hai, yeh koi initiative nahi hai, yeh ek movement hai. Yeh slowly, gradually apna time legi, theek hai, aur hamein thoda sa tolerance deni hogi, theek hai, taake jis tarah log isko ya to dekhenge, woh believe karenge ya woh apne kisi dost ke saath baat karenge aur kahenge maine kiya, tum bhi karke dekh lo. To yeh ahista ahista yeh ek movement hai jo aage badhegi aur hum isko kar sakte hain by city because the beauty is it is very equitable. Woh yeh nahi keh raha ki jo ek insaan agar koi reh raha hai chak number 23 mein, usko bhi tum jaake 55,000 rupaye dekar aa jao. Woh keh raha hai kyunki wahan pe cost of living kam hai to shayad uske liye 28,000 rupaye bhi bahut hai. Haan. Theek hai, aur kyunki woh agar Islamabad mein reh raha hai jo ki ek expensive city hai to wahan pe 57,000 rupees hai. So it's very equitable, it's very fair, yeah, it's by the cost of living of that particular city. So it's very easy and it's workable aur woh jo fair living wage network hai woh bahut detailed calculation karta hai aur woh de sakta hai isko. Interesting. Shahzad agar main thoda sa conversation ko flip karoon, recently because you've been working in education sector for a while and recently there's this switch um I don't know if you've been seeing the whole AI um Chat GPT, Midjourney, revolution happening and there's a huge debate now um in terms of productivity, in terms of efficiency, in terms of the future of human work to begin with. Um and obviously I'm not saying ki Pakistan mein sab badal jayega, you know there's still the Asia grow kar raha hai, African markets hain, products still hain, factory abhi bhi khulengi. Um lekin aaj se 20, 30 saal baad agar hum extrapolate karein to hamein yeh to samajh aa jati hai ki aane wale waqt ka jo kaam hai, insaan ke dimagh ka jo kaam hai, woh critical thinking wala kaam hai, woh problem solving wala kaam hai, woh creativity wala kaam hai. Unfortunately aapne badi achhi baat boli, aapne bola ki yaar out of school children ki hum bahut baat kar lete hain lekin jo in-school children hain woh kya seekh rahe hain aur unko fix karte karte banda top down jaake curriculum badal de, yeh badal de, woh badal de but structurally woh teachers bhi usi system mein hain, woh saara kuch hai to brick and mortar can only do so much. Um teacher training can only do so much. It's definitely required. Um but the sort of radical change that's required in this age of AI may not be possible in the current circumstances. Have you dabbled around other ideas of how, I mean aaj kal to apps ki penetration pe content ke upar kabhi aapne yeh socha ki yaar you know maybe we can again I will tailor back to mere touch point ke upar agar main dekhta hoon ki yaar who can I connect and and and really see so my driver would come in and tell me ki mere bachche first aaye ya woh aaya but uski vicinity ke andar jo bhi uske paas opportunity hai schooling ki woh wahin pe bheje, chhota sa school hai. Um to maine usko multiple times pehle maine yeh bola ki Islamabad ke model schools are actually fairly good to maine kaha tum idhar le aaya karo, udhar kar do, dopahar ko tumne chhodne bhi jaana hai tum chhodne chale aaya karo, koi aisa masla nahi hai. Usne kaha nahi ghar ke kareeb hai. To mujhe bada woh ho raha tha ki main apne bete ko dekhta hoon na woh YouTube pe laga rehta hai, main usko guide karta hoon, yeh dekho, yeh dekho, yeh dekho, yeh dekho, woh bahut tezi se seekh raha hai, woh mareekh pe bhi pahunch chuka hai, woh Pluto se bhi ishq kar baitha hai. But unke paas yeh opportunity nahi hai and why because like you mentioned Urdu language, Punjabi language, Potohari language, in languages mein content available nahi hai, in languages ke andar um you know woh apps available nahi hai jo learning stimulate karein aur allow karein. Do you think there can be more innovative solutions to at least solve the problem solving, critical thinking and creativity side of things for these kids um because the future may just look completely different where the current form of education is just going to be irrelevant? Ek to jaise aapne Chat GPT kaha to Chat GPT jab aaya November mein to main mujhe bahut technology aur iska bahut aur mind kaise kaam karta hai because bachon ki brain development mein so jitna Chat GPT sunke hamare hukumat mein ya baaki dost kehte hain yeh kya hai, isi tarah fair living wage ke baare mein bhi keh rahe the ki yeh kya hota hai. Um dekhein AI aur in tamam cheezon pe itni guftagu ho rahi hai duniya mein ki main us pe kya roshni daal sakta hoon but main aapko yeh bata sakta hoon ki technology bahut important part play karegi. But hamein yeh samajh jaana chahiye ki Covid ke baad ki jo chhota bachcha hota hai na, paanchvi jamaat tak jahan tak uska saara dimagh-wimaagh sab set ho raha hota hai, balki usse bahut pehle ho jaata hai 6-7 saal ki umar mein. Uska human interaction dekhein yeh technology, yeh tamam cheezein yeh supplement compliment karti hain jo bachcha seekh raha hai. So yahan tak to yeh hamesha human interaction bahut zaroori rahega bachche ke liye. Jaise hi jaise aap Covid mein dekha aap bachche ko bitha dein, padhai kara lein, woh nikal aayega usse, woh nahi baithega ek limit, uske lekin woh bahut help karta hai, YouTube videos dekh raha hai, yeh dekh raha hai, bahut. But dekhein na jo creativity hai, creativity jitna yeh sab kuch dekh ke badhti hai, utna hi na dekh kar bhi badhti hai. So aur mind ne yeh sab kuch develop kiya aapke. So jo human interaction hai na chhote bachche ka, uska to kabhi bhi technology usko kabhi bhi substitute woh nahi kar sakti. Lekin jaise hi aap upar jaate jaate hain, is pe bahut debate ho rahi hai ki hoga kya. Main to abhi is par isliye baat nahi karunga Pakistan mein to bahut sahi jagahon pe bijli nahi hai, baat nahi ho sakti aur log kehte hain Pakistan is happening, main kehta hoon it's happening, itni apps aa rahi hain roz that you know, ek aur hum mazaak karte hain ki woh logon ko insomnia hota hai, main inform nahi ho gaya, information ka ki har waqt itna kuch ho raha hai, achha bura yeh woh sab kuch aa raha hai because. So mujhe lagta hai ki yeh jo intelligence, intellect aur yeh tamam cheezein hain, yeh redefine school level par hona shuru ho gayi hui hai. Aur hum hum is par bahut kareeb, humne abhi kuch implement nahi kiya because jo doorbeen hamari organization hai, yeh wahid organization hai jisne Oxford University ke saath partner kiya hua hai to design a masters program for government teachers of Pakistan. Tell me about Doorbeen. I haven't heard much about it. What do you guys do? What's happening there? Ji, it's a teachers training college and Amir sahab bhi aaye hain, bada time unhone guzara tha wahan par. Pakistan ke andar humne decide kar liya tha ki teachers jo hain na unko degree ki zaroorat nahi hai. Aur phir hukumat ne decide kar liya ki aapne B.Com kiya hai, falana kiya hai, aap aaye ek NTS ka test dein aur padhayein. Just like ek doctor jo hai usko MBBS karne ki zaroorat nahi hai, bhai Amir sahab bahut achhe marketer hain, badi achhi haddiyan jodte hain, inse haddi judwa lein aap. To kyunki hum medical science mein aise nahi kehte, isi tarah education mein humein yeh nahi kar sakte because woh brain development hai bachche ki, constantly change ho rahi hai. Right. So humne phir dobara re-establish karna shuru kiya, ek quantum jump li zero se one ki ki nahi, aapko pehle apni obsolete degree theek karni padegi aur phir uske baad yeh compulsion hogi har teacher ko ki woh license le before they teach. Just like that. So licensing including government schools. Ji ji, including private schools also, soon. But abhi hum licensing ki policy lekar aaye hain jo ki jo government teachers 16ve, 14ve grade mein hain, woh 16ve mein ja sakenge. But jo aapke is yahan par main baat karna chahunga, Doorbeen ke andar 12vi jamaat ke baad bachiyan aati hain aur woh chaar saal ka B.Ed program karti hain. It's totally for free. So yahan se bhi log sun sakte hain aur bachiyan aa sakti hain wahan par, Karachi mein, Teachers Training College of Hussainabad. Woh chaar saal ka degree program jaise hi khatam karengi, uske baad unki jo teen saal ka hum contract unke saath karte hain after this free education. It's a world class degree jo hum unko de rahe hain. Uske baad hum unse teen saal ki commitment maang rahe hain and hum unko ek starting banker wali pay denge. Um lekin unhone government school mein padhana hai. Interesting. Three years. Hum unko pay karenge. But ab hukumat aa gayi, aage hukumat ne kaha nahi, aap nahi karenge. Hum inko aam teachers 14 grade mein induct hota hai, agar yeh B.Ed degree karke licensing clear karta hai, jo humne design kiya hai, so yeh 16ve grade mein chala jayega. Aur agar purana government teachers jo 14 grade mein hain, woh agar promotion chahte hain to woh bhi licensing clear. So hum poora yeh paradigm change kar rahe hain. So this is what Doorbeen is. Aur licensing kaun kar raha hai? Like who? Hukumat. So it's Agha Khan University, Doorbeen and Steda, which is hukumat. Right. So you can't bypass. There is a private sector consortium. Public-private partnership will change this country. This is what we are doing. So it's a third party with government designing this licensing. Third party jo ki isko test degi aur ek third party state usko oversee karegi. So bahut, because I have worked, log mujhe kehte hain aapki degree education, main kehta hoon nahi, meri koi political navigation mein meri degree hai. Ki agar aapne koi cheez um ek scientific intervention ko replicate karna hai na kisi mulk ke andar, so woh maine seekha hai apne saare waqt mein, usko aap replicate kaise karenge. So this is what I do. Main bilkul education, educationist nahi hoon. Makes sense. Um Amir bhai, I'm gonna I'm gonna bring this to you and we're going to wrap this up. Um if I can have your thoughts on and we've heard about the fair living wage so I want to sort of expand the horizon a bit. Um if I can hear your thoughts on the current economic situation, how do you see this spanning out? Where do you see this growing? Um and what's your hope uh of what should happen? Bahut mushkil sawaal kar diya aapne. Woh bhi on camera. Um dekhein, uh halaat sakht hain, mushkil halaat hain aur shayad bahut mushkil hain. Kam az kam maine nahi dekha apni life mein aur kaafi mujhse jo senior log hain woh kehte hain humne bhi nahi dekha, itne mushkil halaat hain. Because chaar cheezein hain jo jinka confluence hua hai first time. Um political unrest hua hai, uh economic uncertainty aayi hai, uh social uncertainty aayi hai aur climatic aayi hai. Hmm. Uh pichhle 75 saal ke andar one of the two off track hote the, baaki on track hote the. Agar political stability hai to economic uncertainty hai, ya economic stability hai to political instability hai. To kuch na kuch hota tha. Yeh pehli dafa hua ke chaaron cheezein ek saath ka confluence ho gaya jiski wajah se jo quantum jo mamlaat ka hai woh bahut badh gaya hai. Agar aap history read karein to har country ke liye koi turning point aaya hai. Aur wahan se jo developing ya emerging economies hain ya woh countries hain unhone apna poora aage ka discourse change kiya hai. Aur mere khayal mein Pakistan ka yeh turning point aaya aaj 75 saal baad. I am an optimist and main glass half full dekhne ka main yaqeen rakhta hoon. Aur mere khayal mein do teen examples hain. Ek hamari neighboring country ki hai 91, 1991 ke andar, phir Indonesia 1997 ke andar. Unke halaat humse kahin zyada kharab the jo hum samajh rahe hain aaj hain, but un logon ne usse learn kiya. Unhone turn around kiya aur aaj dono basically ek bahut hi economic superpowers hain. Mere khayal mein hamara liye yeh aaj mauqa aaya hai aur humein is turning point ko bahut ehtiyat ke saath aur bahut soch samajh ke humein apna jo hai na aage navigate karne ki zaroorat hai. So I am hopeful. Why I am hopeful? Because for the first time humein kaafi logon ne basically refuse kar diya ke hum aapko jo hai na funding nahi karenge, kyunki abhi tak na hum apni aamdani badha pa rahe the aur na hum apne akhrajaat kam kar pa rahe the. Aur yeh pehli dafa aisa hua hai ke hum apne ab keh rahe hain humne aamdani akhrajaat to zahiri baat hai humne kam kiye hain. Jis tareeqe se kam kiye hain woh zahiri baat hai ideal nahi hai but hum kar rahe hain kam. At least direction mein. Directionally aur aamdani badhane ki bhi aaj hum baat kar rahe hain ke kis tarah hum export badhayein, kis tarah hum apni cheezon ko localize karein. Woh jo cheezein bahar se import karte the jo Pakistan mein mil rahi hoti thi, kyunki aaj import ban hua to aaj log keh rahe hain yaar Pakistan se khareed lo, isi ko isi khaam maal ko istemaal kar lo. Kaam to chale. Kaam to chale aur unhone realize kiya ke actually jo hai na quality itni buri nahi hai. Hum kyun bahar se manga rahe the? Hum dollar bhi istemaal kar rahe the. To mere khayal mein logon ko bahut serious realization ho rahi hai aur hota yahi hai ke jab mushkil waqt aata hai na to aapko is cheez ki realization hoti hai. Woh Ishfaq Ahmed kehte the na ke jab mushkil ghar ke darwaze pe dastak de na to pareshan mat hona. Uth ke khol lo because kamyabi jo hai woh base badal ke aati hai. Yeah. To mere khayal mein mushkil aayi hai, dastak de rahi hai, ghabrayein nahi. Uth ke khol lein kyunki mere khayal mein agar hum ek zinda qaum hain to humein isse learning leni chahiye aur mere khayal mein learning kuch pockets mein ho rahi hai, realization ho rahi hai. So I am hopeful inshallah ke hum navigate kar lenge, theek hai. Aur aakhri baat kahunga woh Iqbal kehte hain na ke paivasta reh shajar se, ummeed-e-bahar rakh. I'll end here. Right. Shahzad bhai, aap se last comment. I generally ask all of my guests to come on my show. Um, you were a famous pop star. God alone knows what happened and you turned into a social activist and that was incredible for Pakistan. But having followed your social activist journey, it's been very practical and pragmatic. It hasn't been and nothing against those who do otherwise, but in a lot of ways people when when jab aapko ek aadat ho jaati hai na public icon hone ki to phir aap apne social activism mein bhi public iconism ko hi elaborate karte hain. Aapne woh nahi kiya. Aapne bahut zyada problem ko identify kiya aur uske around apne solutions dhoonde. Um, main kabhi kabhar kehta hoon, mera is podcast se maine bahut seekha. 350 bade smart logon se main to kaafi bewakoof sa tha. Lekin smart logon se baat karne se fayda yeh hua ke cheezein bahut seekhte gaye aur jab cheezein seekhte gaye to asliyat bhi wazeh hoti gayi aur jab asliyat wazeh hui to thodi thodi bande ko depression bhi hona shuru ho jaati hai jab aapke saamne cheezein aati hain ke yaar yeh actual mein to yeh ho raha hai. To main apni begum ko bolta hoon ke shayad ignorance was bliss and I should have been ignorant. To us context mein agar aap se main poochun, aap gaye, aapne yeh saara kuch dekha, aapne woh gaana bhi banaya, um, aapne bahut andar se baareeki ke saath dekha bhi, lekin aaj bhi aap lage hue hain. There is a certain hope, there is a certain optimism, warna banda nahi kar sakta. Right? Warna banda ek point pe kehta hai ke yaar maine koshish ki but you know what like I can't. Us optimism aur hope ko agar main channelize karoon and I ask you to extrapolate the the the evolution of Pakistan over the next 27 years, 2050 ka Pakistan aap kaise dekh rahe hain? Ismein main kuch cheezein add karunga. No ifs, ke if this happens then that. No hope ke I hope this will happen and no Pakistan ki youth population. Just give me a raw image ke jo aap aaj dekh rahe hain, us usi ki evolution mein aapko 2050 ka Pakistan kaisa dikh raha hai? Yaar aapne if bhi nahi daalne ki mana kar diya, sab mana kar diya. Dekhein main asal mein is waqt is mulk ke andar ek mushkil cheez ka mujhe goodwill ambassador banaya gaya tha kuch arsa pehle, woh tha population management. Humne ek cheez introduce ki abhi ke nikah jab aap karte hain to union council mein register hota hai aur NCMNH ne ek program banaya reproductive health course. Woh online hoga. So ab humne Nadra ko convince kiya aur ab government ko convince kar diya hai ke agar aapki shaadi hogi to woh nikah Nadra mein register hoga aur aapko reproductive health course karna zaroori hai. Agar aap nahi karenge aapka nikah register nahi hoga. Yeh kuch arse mein hone wala hai. 2050 ka Pakistan bahut important hai jo baat ek to unhone ki climate change and population. Dekhein yeh bahut khatarnak cheez hai. Education reforms, health reforms, sab kuch kya cheeni kar payega agar humne population management nahi ki to? Yeh itna serious issue hai ke in dono ke baare mein koi seriousness nahi hai is mulk ke andar. Aur I don't want to use this word but logon ke liye yeh interesting hi nahi hai because jo ghareeb aadmi hai woh environment ke baare mein kaise sochega? Subah uthta hai, raat ko usko pata hi nahi hai. Population again. So mujhe lagta hai ke agar yeh do cheezein hum manage kar lein, Pakistan ke andar you know the reason I am saying potential hai, duniya mein har jagah log ek jaise hi hote hain. Bahut badi population hai. 22, 25 crore log hain. As I said ke human resource, human capital mein convert hona shuru ho gaya because of technology, not anything else. Technology will uplift Pakistan like anything because you will see brains. Aise aise log experiment karte hue bahar aayenge, ismein hackers bhi honge, ismein aur log bhi honge. But you will bahut kamaal qisam ka but yeh do cheezein agar humne manage nahi ki na to hum hum nahi bacha payenge phir agar humne nahi ki to. Baaki sab reh jayega. Makes a lot of sense. Guys, thank you so much for coming in and um you know, it's an incredible journey that you're on. I hope that you're able to achieve that. Um thank you for everything that you do. Um Shahzad, particularly, thank you for your service. Thank you. And for all of you guys, thank you so much for watching. Agar aapko episode pasand aayi hai to apne doston ke saath zaroor share kariye ga. YouTube pe like ka button dabayenge, engagement badhegi, zyada logon tak hamari conversation pahunchegi aur yeh platform subscribe ka button dabayenge, aane wali episodes ki aapko notification milegi. Yahan par kahin par EasyPaisa, JazzCash ka saadha pyaar hoga. If you like to support the channel, we accept anything from 1 rupee to as much as you'd like it. So thought that counts. But isi ke saath saath guys, was Syed Muzammil Hussain Zaidi. You are watching Thought Behind Things. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.
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