Can Pakistan become a social welfare state?The answer to this question isn’t easy. Our society is dominated by the feudal lords and business tycoons of various types. The religious bigwigs, including adherents of various religious schools of thought also hold a big sway over the gullible masses who can be brought on roads by them at the drop of hat for making the government feel the extent of their nuisance value. Nothing short of a miracle, therefore, can bring an era of egalitarianism in this country.
The concept of social welfare state is modern in essence. It is the direct product of the period when industrialisation took the world by storm. In its initial days untold hardships were faced by the labourers in factories when they used to be underpaid and made to work long hours with no compensation or medical aid in case they got injured by the factory machines. There was no maternity leave for the women labour class. As a reaction to these excesses some political parties took up the cause of the have-nots and after a lot of struggle the mill owners were forced to extend some monetary benefits to the manual workers in their factories. It was Karl Marx who showed the way to the labourers in this matter. In Germany the Social Democratic Party represented the labour class. After the red revolution in Csar’Russia, Lenin established a social welfare system in Russia which was later on introduced by many east European countries too as well as by Cuba. After the Second World War the Labour Party in England introduced the model of the social welfare state which was replicated to a great extent by many other countries including France, Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
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