Our dependency on the State is holding back the nation we want to become

When accidents happen, when justice isn’t delivered, when electricity cuts out or a service fails, we are quick to blame the government. It has become a reflex. Something goes wrong, point at the State. But when we blame the government for everything, we forget a simple truth: the government is not an alien force. It is a body elected by us, representing us, shaped by us, actually us.

So when we point our fingers at the government, aren’t we, in a way, pointing them at ourselves?

We treat the State as a parental figure responsible for every inconvenience, every mishap, every gap in our own behaviour. But the State is only as strong as the society behind it. And somewhere along the way, we stopped seeing that connection.

The birth of democracy and the separation between people and nation

Democracy was created to involve people in governance, to give citizens a voice, a stake, and a responsibility. But when democracy arrived in the Maldives, it did not unite us under shared civic duty. Instead, it split us into colours, factions, and camps. Families divided. Spouses divorced. Friends cut off. The nation became a battlefield of political identity rather than a collective project.

We embraced democracy as a competition, not a responsibility.

And this raises a difficult question:  

Is democracy a suitable governance model for a nation that insists on maintaining a hundred percent single-religion identity? A nation that values unity in faith but fractures instantly in politics? A nation that wants to be one Ummah, yet behaves like ten rival tribes?

'What we do for the nation, not what the nation does for us’

Whether democracy is right or wrong for us, it still gave us tools. It gave us the ability to build, produce, manufacture, innovate, and create. It gave us access to institutions, banks, investors, grants, and global knowledge. It gave us the chance to diversify our economy beyond tourism, if we choose to.

But instead of using these tools, we wait.

We wait for the government to:

• subsidize a farm so we can venture into agriculture and sustain food for the future,  

• provide pesticides, fertilizers, and training (while they’re at it) so we can continue with our farms,  

• bring in enough immigrants to cut our hair, sew our clothes, build our houses, and watch our kids, while also ensuring they don’t take over our culture or market, while being able to pay them salaries,  

• support our fishing industry by subsidizing boats, ice, fuel, and then buying the fish too, and also processing and exporting it, all while involving local businessmen who are waiting to raise their hands the moment the government says “go”,  

• fix the dollar issue while we shop from all over the world and spend all our dollars abroad, then expect imported goods to be priced like the 90s,  

• educate our children, feed them breakfast free in all-free state schools, check their health, and when they finish school, fund their degrees, then their wedding receptions and divorces, to the extent where the maldivian government is now sponsoring being a single parent and also provide us housing so we may dare to make a family,  

• clean our streets, maintain them, prevent accidents, and make them safe, because we can’t wait, we must drive unsafely.

Just last week, Hulhumale' North Councillor at Male' City Council, Zaya, suggested that HDC should install safety grills on all high-rise buildings in Hulhumale' because children keep falling from balconies. Just how omnipotent, how omnipresent must a government be? Where is the individual's responsibility?

If we spoil, spoon-feed and treat our children like they are fragile into adulthood, we are creating a future generation that is incapable of standing on its own feet. If that is what we imagine love, service or care to mean, then our future is truly bleak.

Every government that ever came to power in the Maldives has had to juggle our comfort with the archipelago’s geography, building ports, health centres, schools, and offices in every little island, no matter how dwindling the population. Even if the British still looked after us, like before independence, it would be a daunting task for even the Crown.

Still, we remain stuck in a mindset where development must be delivered to us, not built by us.

Meanwhile:

• Banks offer financing.  

• Investors offer partnerships.  

• Technology offers guidance.  

• AI offers knowledge.  

• The world offers opportunities.

Democracy gave us the chance to act, but we chose to wait.

A nation cannot progress if its people refuse to move

Industrialization has been so successful that most of humanity has accepted life as a cog in the machine, moving through democratic motions, being provided for, consuming, and shifting to the next stage without ever pausing to question the system or our place and purpose in it.

Instead of waiting for someone to hand us development like entitled snobs, we need to push our own economy forward. In Islam, it is not the parent’s duty to provide children with wealth, land, and assets. Parents are instructed to give tarbiyat, proper guidance, moral grounding, and the training required to stand on one’s own feet. Children must work for what they wish to achieve in material terms.

The same applies to nations.

A government can guide, regulate, and support, but it cannot replace the will of its people.  

A nation cannot grow if its citizens refuse to grow.  

A country cannot diversify if its people refuse to innovate.  

A democracy cannot function if its citizens refuse responsibility, and look upon their leader as if he was a waiter.

Going back to a kingdom is impossible.  

But stepping away from the suffocating grip of politics is necessary, because no matter what colour flag we stand under, no matter which party we support, no matter which leader we defend, at the end of the day:

We are each a Maldivian, and we are one Ummah.  

And what we sacrifice of our own is what we give to our motherland.

The government is not separate from us.  

The nation is us.  

And it will only rise when we do.