Motivational Factor of Development with Special Reference to Madar-e-Millat's Role in Creating Countrywide Awakening among Women

BASIC THEME The focus of this write-up is on three points. First: development is a multidimensional process involving major changes not only in socio-economic structures and institutions but also in popular attitudes and perceptions. Second: these changes, however anti-status quo, can be initiated, maintained, and speeded up if some powerful motivational factor comes into operation, as happened during the revolutionary Pakistan Movement. Third: the countrywide enthusiastic celebration of the year 2003 as Madar-e-Millat Year has proved to be one such motivational factor as it has brought about an unusual awakenance among Pakistan’s womenfolk to demand a rightful place in all walks of life. This is heartening especially because nearly half of the country’s population has terribly lagged behind in every conceivable sphere of development. This newly acquired awakenance can be and should be mobilised for speeding up the process of development by strengthening women’s participatory role in all political, economic, cultural, and even religious activities. NATURE OF DEVELOPMENT Economists usually talk of development in economic terms. However, the ground reality is that economic matters are interwoven in practice with the rest of the social system, involving political, cultural, religious as well as economic values and non-economic motivations. No doubt acceleration of gross national product, reduction of inequality, and eradication of poverty are essential ingredients of the process of economic development but they cannot produce satisfactory results without simultaneous changes in social structure, popular attitudes and national institutions. Thus development in a more realistic sense “represent the whole gamut of change by which an entire social system, tuned to the basic needs and desires of