Mankind Is Losing Its Most Precious Asset: Moral Courage – OpEd
Moral courage is the most precious asset for nation building. The educated people, intellectuals, media, leaders and the youth cannot build a nation without moral courage. The moral courage to tell the truth, question and analyze the good and bad things in the system is fast disappearing from the human mind. As this priceless human virtue is on the decline, it makes room for corruption, mismanagement, income disparity and the growth of dictatorship etc. How to build moral courage among the people is the biggest challenge before the global community.
When educated people fear to question or express their frank opinion on relevant issues concerning national interest, they bring ruin to their families, society, region, culture, religion and the country. Without the moral courage to speak and feel the truth, a person dies a thousand times in his lifetime. Yet he takes pride in his present shameful existence. Lack of moral courage is one of the main reasons why dictatorship emerges from the democratic and from communist countries. When a human being becomes a dictator he misuses the financial, social, cultural and religious institutions for his own empowerment only. The human sufferings aggravate in the shadows of the dictators. Human rights become meaningless. The social, cultural and the financial institutions lose their efficiency, democratic value and vibrancy due to lack of moral courage among the people.
The much needed reform in various religions does not happen due to lack of moral courage among the religious leaders and their followers. This is the reason why religions instead of breeding love and universal brotherhood are breeding violence, intolerance and hatred. The global community should not be divided on the basis of religions as the main purpose of the religion is to spread love, compassion and universal brotherhood among the people.
Nearly eight million children are reported missing worldwide every year. Lack of moral courage is one of the reasons why the number of missing children is so alarming. It is not known how many children end up in the sex racket. Nobody knows how many are facing hell daily due to the dark side of some rich and influential people who have become potential threats to the children. The sexual exploitation of children as documented in the Epstein file is a slur on human civilization. People who are supposed to protect innocent children have let them fall into the vicious circle due to lack of moral courage.
Global debt has reached a record high of approximately $345 trillion by 2026, which is three times the size of the global economy. Though the total non-performing loans (NPLs) worldwide have not been accessed, the large-scale defaults are growing to threaten the economies of many countries. If the countries are unable to service the loans, where is the economic growth benefit? This proves that the majority of people handling the financial sector do not have economic sense and moral courage to prevent the bad loan growth in their countries. They try to cover up the bad loans with soft loans and aids from the international agencies; they try to hide it through privatization, amalgamation and by injecting capital. Had the poor South Asian nations shown moral courage to take strong action against the big fraudsters, they could have strengthened their economies long back. Cyber criminals have made South Asia their happy hunting ground.
According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) report published in August 2025 Bangladesh had the highest NPL ratio at 20.2% in 2024 and Sri Lanka had 12.9%. The NPL in India plummeted to $ 56.31 billion in 2024 from $ 69.41 billion in 2023; it is still alarming. Pakistan’s Non-Performing Loans (NPLs) stood at 3.4273.427 billion USD in September 2025. The NPL in Nepal has reached 4.86% by the first quarter of 2025-26. The non-performing loans (NPLs) in the Afghan banking system soared to over 57% by late 2021 and the situation has not improved in 2026 also. The main purpose of the bank credit is to promote entrepreneurship and generate surplus income for a healthy credit cycle. If the loans turn into non performing assets, there is something wrong in the economic planning. Those countries are exposed to the loot and plunder of the politico-traders-middlemen lobby. They need enormous moral courage and genuine leadership in the financial sector to stem the rot. Financial institutions should function independently without political interference. In poor countries there is a need of 75% public sector banks and 25% private sector banks keeping in view of a large number of uneducated and poor borrowers. If governments privatize everything, what is their role in the governance mechanism in those countries?
Lack of moral courage is the main reason why unemployment, hunger, malnutrition, environmental degradation, violence, unrest, war and aggression continue to haunt the global community. Lack of moral courage in the developing nations has made them guinea pigs and do not allow the countries to become self reliant. The majority of them fail to think on their own to bring innovation and scientific discovery.
Instilling moral courage in the minds of the youth should become the priority of every country. The best way to do it is by teaching children about the glorious history, brave deeds of the national heroes, rich heritage and culture of the country. While planting patriotism, confidence and moral courage, no country should teach their children to underestimate other nations; each nation has a unique culture and glorious history.
Reading religious scriptures always builds moral courage. When a human being realizes that his soul is god’s particle and he is supposed to do good for mankind, he recharges the moral courage in him. So the best parts of all religious scriptures of the world need to be summarized and told to people. Similarly, any paragraph in the religious scriptures which creates hatred and ill feelings towards other religious communities should be deleted for the growth, prosperity and universal brotherhood. Every religion needs to have more spiritualism in it. Today, the world community needs enormous moral courage to end war, aggression, hunger, malnutrition, child trafficking and economic slowdown.
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