Coming to my personal favourite, Tier-1 infrastructure. This too is an area that has seen absolutely tremendous improvement in the last 5-10 years. So much is being done in Pakistan - so much construction, so much building - that it is hard for me to list here. There are actually entire websites devoted to tracking projects worth billions and billions of USD$ that are in progress in Pakistan at any given moment.

We started off with the Lahore-Isl Motorway. It took us 45 years to get to that level. And in the next 10, we exceeded Akbar's penchant for building! The Sindh-Baluchistan Coastal Highway, a brand new port city in Gwadar, a new Airport in Lahore, international airport at Sialkot, two new ones being built in Islamabad (Pakistan's largest) and Gwadar.

Multiple dams are under construction, the M2 Motorway now connects with M1, so Lahore-Peshawar is an end to end six-lane super-highway. That network was also extended to Sargodha and Faisalabad (complete), from Karachi to Hyderabad (expansion), and now the highway network is shadowing the old Grand Trunk road, snaking down into Multan. We've also widened and upgraded the world's highest highway, the Karakoram Friendship Highway and are building rail links through the length of Pakistan (Gwadar to China).

The number of hotels under construction in Pakistan will more than quadruple the number of 5-star rooms in the country; Hyatt in Lahore, another in Islamabad, Intercontinental in Islamabad, 7-star Centaurus in Islamabad etc. etc. The Sheikh Zayed complex under construction in Lahore will be completed in the next 3-4 years and will be the highest building in South Asia. On a clear day you will be able to see the Golden Temple from its observation deck.

The neighbouring Software Park Tower, to be completed in the next 4-5 months, is a technological marvel. Lahore's under construction Ring Road will put an almost 80km highway loop all around the city, making distant parts readily accessible, connecting the new housing societies and DHA (Defence Housing Authority) Phases to the older parts of the city. Just in Lahore alone, there will be a near doubling of modern housing capacity in the next decade with Defence Phase 6, 7, 8 and 9, Lake City (10,000 homes) and a plethora of others.

Phew. That took quite some effort. But I hope it was worth it.

The net-net of all of the above is that Pakistan is at the cusp of exponential infrastructural improvement and development. We will transform our country into an even more amazing and wonderful place in the next 10-20 years. We will see continuous improvement in all these areas and more, through the next 2 decades. By 2030 you will see Pakistan emerge as a very significant global power, inshaAllah. It's all in the numbers and it's going to happen. Damn the naysayers.