14 - 15th August
Brownies still fighting whose doing better under the whities.
Guys come back.
Serve the nation
Bhai easy to say, hard to do.
If I moved back I would have to settle in a city, it's the only way i'd find IT work. In most of our cities we can't even get clean drinking water. Is it fair for me to take all of the advantages the UK offers and then to deny them to my children out of patriotic fervour?
Be honest can someone working in IT on an above average salary afford to buy a house in Islamabad or Lahore or Karachi? Are the areas you can afford to buy in safe? Do they have clean drinking water? What are the schools like? What about the standard of healthcare? One of my parents was recently in intensive care, Allah returned that parent to me from the dead. In Pakistan we don't have those similar medical facilities available to people on a normal salary. I know many relatives and people from our village who have died traveling to Pindi where we can access decent health care. I know someone who regularly visited a renowned private doctor at great cost and was only being prescribed multivitamins as "medicine".
There is everything for those who are rich, but the working man struggles. If we had better living conditions i would come back in a heart beat, but until then, no chance, it's unfair on those i have a responsbility to.
The Indian people who came to the UK are indeed doing very well. 2 main reasons;
1. Mangla dam. Many Pakistani's in the UK are from Mirpur the region. When these people moved they went there as manual labourers who's homes had been washed away by the building of the dam. The dam flooded in the 90's and put more people in the same position again, and then was expanded recently puting more people in the same position. Those impacted each time were allocated poor lands and also had to work against corruption to get the lands. The family members who were in the UK then sent back money to help them re-build.
2. Education levels. Again a lot of our people came as labourers. AJK is rural, people are literate but not often educated to a degree level (though recently that has changed in a big way with private colleges etc). The people who came here in the UK did manual labour.
3. Going back home. Our people have always harboured hope of going back home. Early generations would often go back for years at a time to emerse their children in Pakistani culture. They thought they'd make some money and go back, unfortunately for many that was just no possible. The Indian people i think integrated more here and decided to settle in.
4. Everyone works. For Indians everyone works. The daughters, the daughter in laws, the sons, father, mother, right upto old age. You'll see tha Aunti ji's running the shops in the morning even. Our people didn't do that until recently, ie last 15-20 years. Now it is common for everyone to work, but that's more to do with cost of living and aspiration.
5. Education again. For the Indians the first generation were labourers but they wanted their next generation to be educated and they worked hard at it. Not everyone became a doctor, but people ran shops, became plumbers, worked in HR and social services, and they passed that onto their grandkids too.
Our community has failed at that until recently. Now we see the success of the Indians and race and compete to get children educated, but the second generation here, generally missed that boat, mainly because we needed the money to fix the financial difficulties "back home". In some communities they still don't get it (the most deprived towns) but on the whole my generation and the generation after have a much higher percentage of educated people than before.
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Mind you the stats don't always tell the truth. I can tell you for a fact most Taxi drivers in the Midlands make £40-45,000 a year. They declare next to nothing in their tax returns. Taxi drivers in some of the smaller towns up north make less, but areas like Leeds, Manchester etc, easily similar money. Down south they make a lot more. It's cash in hand, why would you declare it any pay tax on it? Or if people do they only do it long enough to secure a mortgage and then slowly tail off again.
The same is true for takeaway owners. They get caught out more often. My cousin works at a place that takes £3-4000 a week in profits, he's recently been caught out by the tax man. He didn't even declare most of his staff.
Unfortunately we still have plenty of people who'll work cash in hand, claim unemployment and get benefits too. They have no shame in taking haram.
Another thing to consider is Pakistani's from the cities. You people from Pindi and Karachi and Lahore who came to the UK all came from well off backgrounds. These people are doing just as well as any Indian in the UK. By far though the superstar community is the Gujurati's, especially the ones who came from Africa. These guys are so hard working, their shops are even open on eid.
