Navigating world on an empty stomach

Sadia Khan IN the middle of immediate political and economic crises, Pakistan’s leadership remains oblivious to a looming existential challenge that is to prepare Generation Alpha and Generation Beta for a rapidly transforming world. Developing nations, perpetually trapped in short-term survival cycles, face a severe structural disadvantage. Pakistan, ranking poorly on human development indices in South Asia, is a stark example of this systemic failure. Ongoing internal friction keeps both the state and its citizens entirely occupied, forcing a collective ignorance of the future. After all, as the ancient proverb reminds us, a hungry stomach has no ears. This collective blindness directly collides with the reality that Generations Alpha and Beta are fundamentally distinct from their predecessors, inheriting an unprecedentedly volatile technological landscape. While Millennials transitioned from desktops to laptops and Gen Z grew up alongside the internet, Alpha was born with tablets and Beta is being raised by Artificial Intelligence. In Beta’s world, AI will dictate medicine, law, education and global communication. The World Economic Forum and major global consultancy frameworks project that a massive percentage of current workforce tasks will be automated or structurally altered within the decade. This rapid evolutionary shift demands a radical overhaul of our educational and social structures. The urgency for this overhaul underscores the tragic fact that our existing public systems are still built for a bygone industrial era. They are designed to mass-produce submissive force: individuals trained to follow rigid scripts, ask no questions, memorize static data and value predictability. Yet, the future marketplace offers no stability; it rewards only flexibility and cognitive speed. Survival will require advanced soft skills such as critical thinking, emotional intelligence, data literacy and rapid adaptability. It necessitates the cultivation of skills that AI w