If we, despite not agreeing to the concept of 'Social Darwinism', would agree to this point that in this swift changing world, the best means of survival is the creation of knowledge based society. This is the only issue on the basis of which Europe and US are managing their hegemony on the developing countries.
For a country like Pakistan, with a huge population of around 20 carores, the best way to the survival is to shift to the knowledge based economy. Ultimately scientific, logical and rational based knowledge seeking process would ensure our sustainability. In Pakistan, we have wasted our crucial time on unnecessary and petty issues which blocked the process of knowledge creation and ultimately took our society in the wrong direction due to which we lagged behind as compared to several other nations.
I have no hesitation in citing example of Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, which were not that much developed three to four decades earlier and we were very much ahead of them, but now we can see the real difference and must ask question from our self 'What went wrong?'
Still there is time to do something. It is the responsibility of all of us, especially universities to come forward and contribute something in research. Some of the universities are already playing a pivotal role in this regard but they need right direction, coordination and implementation by the policy makers.
We, at SZABIST despite being a relatively young and small educational institution, have been trying our best to do research work, besides our routine academic responsibilities. In just this year, we had one national conference in May and one international conference in December, whereas many national and international seminars also took place as well. We are publishing two bi-annual research journals regularly in the fields of Management Sciences, Social Sciences and in Computing as per international standards. Faculty and students are actively participating in national and international conferences. We encourage analytical minds in our university, who may ask question and then try to find out solutions for problems as well. This is the actual task of institutions of higher learning. We would continue with this task in future as well, considering it as our national cause and responsibility.