Before the apprehension of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, newspapers were filled with the articles on how the previous year passed! Likewise, I have been reading various pieces on the achievements of Pakistan in 2025. It is true that Pakistan has remained absolutely on the pivot last year. From a state that was on the brink of default just eighteen months ago, 2025 was a year of strategic rejigging. We have seen the economic soft landing with the head-line inflation plummeting to a seven-year low of around 4.5 percent.
We saw the success of Operation Azm-e-Istehkaam that neutralized major militant threats on our borders. There was the landmark PAK-KSA Defence Pact that cemented our strategic security alliance in the Middle East. We felt the restoration of conventional deterrence by Operation Bunyan-un-Marsoos after the Pahalgam false-flag. We have finally been witnessing a reset in relations with the U.S. Recently, the privatization of PIA finally got out of the debating stage and moved to a 135-billion-rupee reality. Even on the global stage, our return to the UN Security Council’s presidency marked a diplomatic thaw that we have not felt in years.
While Pakistan has been able to accomplish much in 2025, the business is far from over. There are some areas, in my view, that must be seriously addressed. Rationally, the cooling of inflation is a sigh of relief, but by no means a victory. Our GDP growth is still in a low-speed lane, the current growth barely keeps our heads above water. We are in a trap of low growth where the economy is stable but stagnant. We are not creating wealth; we are just managing poverty. However, the stability is good for the books but real growth is what puts food on the table for the millions living below the poverty line.
This stagnation leads to the most painful crisis: Brain Drain. Official data implies that more than 800,000 skilled professionals emigrated from the country in 2025 alone, with costing around $4.2 billion annually to economy. On a personal level, these statistics are more than just numbers. Nearly the majority of my mates from my alma mater have left for greener pastures abroad. I sometimes feel lonely that I am left with no one to meet; my WhatsApp groups are now just a collection of different time zones. It is a quirky, sad reality that the very people who are supposed to build our future are busy creating someone else’s.
Digital governance is also equally contradictory. While we celebrate the auction of the 5G spectrum as a leap into the future, the ground reality is a digital iron curtain. The persistent restrictions on X and the ever-strengthening grip over VPNs makes the promise of a ‘Digital Pakistan’ sound more like a marketing tagline than a policy. Can we really run a 5G economy on a restricted internet? We cannot expect tech investments for 5G speed if we are running the internet on analog-era restrictions.
Furthermore, the climate crisis is no longer a distant threat, but our winter companion. At COP30 in Brazil, Pakistan rightly pleaded for “implementation over pledges” but at home, reality is grim. The 2025 monsoon again brought devastating floods in Punjab and Sindh because we are still reacting to disasters rather than preparing for them. And as I write this, Lahore’s smog is a permanent fixture of winter, choking the very life out of the city. We are championing ‘Climate Justice’ overseas while our own cities become unbreathable with the lack of enforcement for the environment locally.
2025 has gone well, but we, nevertheless, must retain the resilient spirit of the previous year, and look towards 2026 & beyond with a more critical eye on the youth, the climate and the digital future. I am reminded of a letter Karl Marx once wrote to Engels in 1861:
“I wish you … every happiness for the new year. If it’s anything like the last one, I … would sooner consign it to the devil.”
May 2026 be the year that we do not “consign it to the devil”, and start building a home that our friends don’t feel the need to leave.
