While Pakistan is besieged by Islamist militant threat, corrupt government, and grinding poverty in most places, a group of middle-class teenagers organized themselves via Facebook, pick up their shovels, and clean up city garbage every Sunday.
Students from elite private schools, they opt not to laze around in their comfortable homes during weekend and instead act on a very real problem while their elders simply complain, rant, and rave about society.
This is a showcase of a burgeoning new generation on the Pakistani landscape. These youth do not merely accept the system but revolt against it. Their response is immediate and concrete. They want to change their society, as they have clearly shown. The name of their organization is ‘Responsible Citizens.’ One of their first clean-up projects is a public market in Lahore.
They say that the reason why the Taliban is slowly able to encroach in Pakistan, especially in the northwest Swat Valley, is because the insurgent group is organized. These youth see the need to organize, as well.
Pakistan’s hope may just be its young generation, and as all effective revolutionary movements have proven, the change is best initiated by the middle class.
