Imagine setting out to settle on a distant planet with a large crew and realising as you land there after a long, arduous journey that you have made no provision for water supply except what your vessel carries for immediate consumption. You may laugh but common sense is not a very common gift. For a country that has spent the past decade if not more dreaming about becoming the hub of regional connectivity courtesy projects like CPEC, being this ignorant of its maritime resources is unforgivable. There is a term for this state of affairs. It is called sea blindness.

Not convinced? Just recall all references to the ocean in our literature, pop culture, folk tales and news cycles, and tell me what you remember. Our collective imagination does not go beyond the beaches of Karachi, that too because going to those beaches has been a thing throughout our lives. In our history books too, what we have preserved is only the record of foreign invasions from sea by Muhammad bin Qasim and the British and not our own adventures on the sea. Many excuses can be made for this landlocked mindset. The vast territory of Pakistan is not directly exposed to the ocean. Punjab, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan all are landlocked provinces. Only parts of Balochistan and Sindh have direct access to the sea. But then Balochistan covers half of Pakistan’s landmass and is sparsely populated. So you need to travel a lot if you want to get to the sea. You can also blame it on how city and infrastructure development took place during colonial times. Our post-colonial state has done precious little, at least in the first five decades, beyond thinking........

© The Express Tribune