Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, March 29th, 2024

Getting out of Social Problems

No society in the world is perfect and there are social problems and evils in all the societies. However, there are certain societies that have been able to control most of the evils, while some others have not been able to perform well and as a result they have been suffering because of myriads of issues that they face in their daily lives. These social problems are really negative and they are the factors that unsettle the social life to a great extent. They have the capacity to introduce disturbances and troubles in the lives of the individuals inhabiting the society and the overall social norms, values, relations and activities. Some of the dominant social evils include poverty, crime, corruption, drug addiction, juvenile delinquency, robbery, theft, begging and many others.
Many of these evils are, in fact, closely inter-related and have the cause and effect influence over one another. Nonetheless, all of these evils have the capacity to challenge and even sabotage the civilized and better living conditions in human societies.
There cannot be one particular reason behind the social evils. There are different reasons that are responsible for hosting these evils and debilitating a society to perform well for its inhabitants.
One of the basic reasons is the absence or weak adherence to the basic principles of justice. Without adhering to the rules and regulations based on justice and fair-play, it would be very difficult to have a society free of social evils.
Our own society, Afghanistan, can be studied in this regard. The basic reason behind the social evils that haunt us is the absence of justice and a system of check and balance. Moreover, there is no strong mechanism that can ensure that the justice or the rules and regulations are enforced properly. There are certain people who have hijacked the whole system and they are the ones who take advantage of it. The system is only for their service and provide them benefits and luxuries, while millions of other people fail to survive. Justice is, in fact, their words and their desires, and does not serve a higher objective of bringing about harmony within the society.
On the other hand, corruption has made the situation even worse. In fact, corruption is one of the key problems in Afghanistan. Without solving the issue of corruption it would be extremely difficult to make achievements as far as solving the social issues are concerned. If the resources and the energies are wasted for the corrupt intentions and self-centered objectives, there would not be much to exert against the social evils. Rather, it would have a reverse impact – corruption would further deteriorate the situation and give rise to many other ones. For example, it is not possible to solve the prevailing poverty, if the authorities who are responsible for certain programs to minimize poverty get involved in corruption and misuse the resources that are allocated for those programs. The resources would never reach to the deserving people and the programs would fail completely. This is what has been happening in Afghanistan. There have been various assistance programs and funds allocated for certain social problems by the international donor agencies and international community but most of that has been devoured by corruption and a little has reached to the poor people and the consequences are now in front of all of us.   
Most of societies in the modern world enact their rules and regulations through a just and proper system of law and order. Strong law and order system strives to achieve justice and minimizes the social evils. Through effective law enforcing agencies, including police, courts and prisons, an active law and order system makes utmost effort that justice is served to the people. The ones who are culprit must be punished while the ones who are innocent must not suffer ill treatment. Afghanistan needs to have the same sort of system.
Another way of controlling or eradicating social evils can be through the values that are disseminated by the social institutions. The social institutions can inculcate within the individuals the awareness about the evils and the ways to avoid them. Among the social institutions, families and education systems can play an important role in this regard. Family, being the primary institution for an individual, can make an individual socially acceptable and guide his attitude in such a way that he becomes a positive member of society. Then there are educational institutions. They can play a tremendous role in establishing the characters of the individuals and making them aware so that they are able to make better choices in the society that may not benefit their individual lives but the social life as well. The roles of cultural and social institutions are also of utmost importance in this regard. They have high social value and influence and through the same they can bring about positive changes in the society by making the members of society abhor and avoid social evils and condemn them in every possible manner.