Forget polio, Pakistan is 'BIGGER' than India and size is all that matters!

So let there be disability, misery and illness. Because polio vaccines might be a threat to Pakistan's fertility...

A few days ago, a leading British newspaper carried a news story that stated:
“The World Health Organisation certified the south-east Asian region – which includes India but excludes Afghanistan and Pakistan – polio-free after three years without a single new case being reported. The WHO said this meant 80% of the world’s population lived in polio-free regions, an important step towards global eradication of the crippling disease.”

It is a massive coup for the people of India, for the people of those other countries now free of polio and for the world in general, for achieving an 80% eradication of the disease. ‘The world’ includes the people of Pakistan as well but instead of being upset about their stark exclusion from the polio-free list, they actually seem terribly chuffed – for a different reason.

The people of Pakistan, although not polio-free, are happy because of another, older piece of news based on a research conducted by the Ulster University. This research apparently confirms racial stereotypes in the matter of size with regards to a particular part of the anatomy. This difference in size has become a matter of great importance for Pakistanis, even greater than the presence of polio in their country.

In the study, India ranks fourth from the bottom, below Pakistan, and that’s all that counts. Of course, as long as we beat the Indians in such important matters – as we apparently did in a stiff competition – all else remains insignificant.

Richard Lynn, professor emeritus of psychology at Ulster, carried out the research referred to and it has been published in a scientific journal. Subjects from 113 countries were studied and the conclusions, such as they are, were arrived at. Let me point out that the research in question is being strongly criticised everywhere but there are few naysayers in Pakistan.

The mind boggles at the methodology involved in the collection of data for this study at Ulster and the sheer magnitude of the variables that must have been accommodated in the process.

But what the heck – the mind boggles at many things in these parts where, for example, workers administering polio drops to children are regularly shot at and killed. The mind boggles simply trying to encompass the mentality of the people trying to hamper the anti-polio campaign. After all, who would wish to prevent children from contracting polio? What kind of thought processes must such people have, not to mention motives?


If the people, who kill polio workers, indeed consider themselves to be acting on religious grounds, which religion is this that calls for people to lead a disabled existence, in pain and discomfort, unable to function as every human being has a right, a birthright, to do so?

And which religion calls for murder?

But of course, these things are not important to the larger section of the population, particularly that section which takes pronouncements made by the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) seriously. They, after all, must believe that their religion allows underage children to be married and its women to have no say in important marital matters.

So let there be disability, misery and illness; let Pakistan marry off its underage population; let its men take as many wives as they and they alone like, and its women wither away in misery. And let its mothers have no say in matters concerning their children’s health, such as whether or not their children should receive the polio vaccine.

Let’s make sure that Pakistan remains amongst the countries that play host to the polio virus, since God forbid that any Pakistani should be vaccinated by anything that has even an imaginary chance of threatening fertility and related parts of the anatomy, however unconnected the vaccine may be with this threat.

There is only one thing that matters and we say that loud and clear: we must remain ahead of India, by whatever means possible.

It’s very confusing folks; it’s all jumbled together in our minds, just like this blog: anatomy, religion, patriotism, size and fertility, suppression of women, evil polio vaccines, America, and Zionist intrigue.

Long live Pakistan where it’s all okay, even polio, so long as Ulster tells it like it is.
WRITTEN BY: Rabia Ahmed
The author is a freelance writer and translator.

The views expressed by the writer and the reader comments do not necassarily reflect the views and policies of the Express Tribune.