We're on the way to the six­ti­eth year of In­de­pen­dence and the best mes­sage one can send at this time is to tell hes­i­tant peo­ple to get vac­ci­nat­ed as bil­lions have done world­wide, so we can move on from the bur­den of lock­downs. The pan­dem­ic has gen­er­at­ed much fear, and hav­oc on health­care sys­tems and economies. Still, it has al­so cre­at­ed many op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­no­va­tion and build­ing the coun­try with a healthy nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment as the foun­da­tion for fu­ture pros­per­i­ty.

Yes, there is much suf­fer­ing. Those whose liveli­hoods are cur­rent­ly as­sured and may nav­i­gate through the chal­leng­ing times are for­tu­nate. We can­not know the sever­i­ty of the dis­tress of oth­ers who don't have liveli­hoods un­less we have walked in their shoes. Lives and liveli­hoods are sym­bi­ot­ic and are mu­tu­al­ly in­clu­sive re­al­i­ties of ex­is­tence. If any­thing, COVID-19 should have made us aware of our mor­tal­i­ty, re­mind us to en­gage one an­oth­er re­spect­ful­ly, and, how in ex­er­cis­ing in­di­vid­ual rights such as to vac­ci­nate or not, af­fects oth­ers.

In­deed, the in­ven­tions of in­no­v­a­tive minds who had long gone, the tenac­i­ty of brave peo­ple who are no longer with us con­tin­ue to in­spire gen­er­a­tion af­ter gen­er­a­tion. Their sci­ence, lit­er­a­ture and art live on to in­flu­ence us—the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of their ge­nius.

In that spir­it, we could have en­tered the 59th year of In­de­pen­dence with hope and re­solved to do bet­ter than we had done over the last decades. Re­gret­tably, it wasn't words of in­spi­ra­tion that dom­i­nat­ed the an­niver­sary head­lines. It was gun talk, demon­strat­ing the kind of my­opia that could threat­en sta­bil­i­ty—a sta­bil­i­ty that we have so far man­aged well. Po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty does not hap­pen in a vac­u­um, so we must have done many things right, more so when con­sid­er­ing the po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sive­ness that ex­ists.

One could not have imag­ined a po­ten­tial men­ace of pri­vate cit­i­zens be­ing al­lowed to amass guns le­git­i­mate­ly be­cause it’s le­gal to do so—not with the high lev­el of crimes com­mit­ted with guns here, not with the mass killings by de­ranged minds and ex­trem­ists par­tic­u­lar­ly in the USA—peo­ple who have ‘the right to bear arms.’ Sure, laws must be up­held, but there is a tru­ism. What is le­gal isn't nec­es­sar­i­ly eth­i­cal or serves the pub­lic good, es­pe­cial­ly if a sit­u­a­tion pos­es a clear dan­ger to lives and the coun­try's sta­bil­i­ty. There's a sim­ple so­lu­tion to a law that may per­mit every Tom, Dick, and Har­ry who may be thieves, killers, or self-right­eous psy­chopaths to amass guns even with a rel­e­vant screen­ing process. Why not rec­om­mend the law be changed? Af­ter all, there are al­ready enough weapons in the hands of gangs and traf­fick­ers to cause bloody may­hem.

As we grap­ple with COVID-19 and step gin­ger­ly in­to the fu­ture, much de­pends on the qual­i­ty of gov­er­nance. By gov­er­nance, I am not re­fer­ring to the Gov­ern­ment. It is gov­er­nance that in­cludes the par­lia­men­tary Op­po­si­tion, the ju­di­cia­ry, civ­il so­ci­ety, busi­ness lead­ers, et al that have in­put or may in­flu­ence na­tion­al pol­i­cy some­how. But sup­pose I had to se­lect one thing that could make a mean­ing­ful dif­fer­ence to Gov­ern­ment in the fu­ture, it would be the train­ing and de­vel­op­ment of the youth in­clined to­ward fu­ture com­mu­ni­ty and po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship. Why? While there are many arms of the gov­er­nance sys­tem, the elect­ed di­rec­torate has the most pow­er and di­rect im­pact on the coun­try's well-be­ing. It is from with­in po­lit­i­cal par­ties pri­mar­i­ly that emerge gov­ern­ment min­is­ters and par­lia­men­tar­i­ans who make up the high­est law-mak­ing body of the land. It is the young gen­er­a­tion who will com­prise the fu­ture Cab­i­nets. And it is why their train­ing in eth­i­cal lead­er­ship would be in­stru­men­tal to the coun­try's fu­ture well-be­ing. They are the ones who will in­flu­ence the se­lec­tion of the fu­ture Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic, Chief Jus­tice, Head of De­fence Force, and oth­er lead­ers of the State.

Hefty par­ty funds and po­lit­i­cal do­na­tions usu­al­ly go in­to the elec­tions' po­lit­i­cal ma­chin­ery. But it will be ben­e­fi­cial to in­vest re­sources in train­ing the young ad­vo­cates in civics and eth­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty and na­tion­al lead­er­ship. Per­haps such ed­u­ca­tion is viewed in the con­text of uni­ver­si­ty de­grees. All too of­ten, one hears if it is le­gal, it's okay. There is much murk­i­ness be­tween what is le­gal and un­eth­i­cal be­cause of cul­tur­al norms.

Cer­tain­ly, ed­u­ca­tion is the most pro­duc­tive eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty to­ward a ma­ture and en­light­ened so­ci­ety. At the very least, it is one way of re­duc­ing the in­flu­ence of an­ti-vaxxers. We must see the fu­ture be­yond COVID.