One of the problems with anniversaries is that they compel one to revisit the past with all its traumas. Fortunately for Pakistan, two out of every three of its people are less than 30 years old and for the young the past will not have the same power to produce regret, anger and despair as it does for their parents and grandparents.

So, the country can look ahead with hope instead of backwards and that is one of the two things most needed at this stage in its history. The second requirement is courageous and wise leadership if political instability and misgovernance which have cruelly arrested Pakistan's development are to be overcome.

Military rule for half of the last 50 years played havoc with politics, civilian governments did the same with economics for the rest of the time. One set of facts tells the whole story of missed opportunities, warped priorities and stunted growth.

Pakistan astonished the world with its quick economic recovery after Partition and the 1948 war. Over the last half century it has shown a more rapid rate of economic growth than any of its neighbours. It ought, therefore, to have been the first tiger to come roaring out of South Asia.

But today, the economy is on its knees with soaring debt, a high fiscal deficit and falling growth rates. There is the same proportion of poor people as in India and an equally appalling record in literacy and health care.

In addition to the general malaise of mismanagement which Pakistan shares with the rest of the subcontinent, it has its own peculiar one. Its deeply entrenched feudal-military-bureaucratic complex has a gridlock on the country preventing it from going forward, paralysing its institutions and enterprise, obstructing talented professionals and modernising classes from playing their proper role in society.

Blighted hopes of good governance over the decades have led to a loss of popular confidence in the political leadership. As the authority of the state has weakened, it has become increasingly ineffective in dealing with everything from the paroxysms of violence arising out of ethnic and sectarian strife in Sindh and Punjab to huge social inequalities and massive political corruption.

One thing Pakistanis have learned on the sportsfield as elsewhere is how to come back fighting. So they brought Nawaz Sharif back in the hope that a resounding popular mandate would enable him to do what others have failed to do with the political structure and the economy.

But they must know that even five years is not enough time to undo all the damage of the past. But if he can make a beginning and show there are ways out of the country's complex, deep-rooted problems, it would be good enough.

If Sharif's current economic gamble works, industrial output and export growth begin to pick up and investors return, people's minds are bound to turn from problems to the solutions.

That kind of psychological impact will strengthen his hands in the battles he must inevitably wage with vested interests in order to improve socio-economic conditions. He can proceed only step by cautious step and always with an eye on reaction from the political elite. But succeed he must. Pakistan cannot afford more failures.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.