Getting Our Priorities Right.

When change is required, as it always is, since we have never reached the ultimate lasting situation, it is essential that we first analyse and make up our minds. In the title of the article, I say that we must have our priorities right, define the goals and aims, strategise, and keep at it, seeing results step by step. The ultimate goals are perhaps more like dreams than something concrete and nearby. We must do what is more important before what is less important.

I have a wealthy friend who keeps reminding me of the difficult living situation that many ordinary and poor people have, not the least in the current time with inflation and high price increases, also with shortages in some fields. The government has warned of challenges ahead of us, and has enforced higher prices for petroleum, electricity, and more, and higher taxes. These policies affect all, especially the middle and lower classes. Salaries and wages will not go up, and the money people are paid will reach shorter than before. That will impact people's nutrition, health, housing, and living conditions in general. People can economise but there is a limit to that.

Companies will try to keep their profits as before, and they will often freeze payments to staff, even lower them, and cut, for example, meals during working hours and other things. Some employers will not be able to keep up standards and make reasonable profits, avoiding close-down. Other companies will take advantage of the situation and let the staff take a higher burden than they should. Some causes for the hardships can be placed on the Corona pandemic, the Russian war in Ukraine, and other international issues. But let us not use those causes as excuses, although they are important, and do what we can locally.

Recently, I heard about an employer requiring the staff to work fourteen hours a day, only with two rest days per month, and wages much below Islamabad's minimum salary stipulations. In such situations, staff risk being laid off if they complain, as there are many job seekers lined up to take any vacancy, for short or long. In order to improve work conditions, it is essential that employees unionise. Also, employers will have their organisations. The state should regularise these issues as they are key when it comes to keeping priorities right in the working life.

As much as I am an advocate of education at all levels, indeed universal basic education, we must consider if tighter and cheaper ways of...