Never once have the Pakistani people been told about the logic behind this tirade against sims.
ISLAMABAD: The Land of the Pure seems to generate an endless demand for ‘scapegoats’. With systemic failures left, right and centre, these cherished animals, although once inherently abundant, are becoming endangered species and will soon have to be protected like mountain goats. To address this impending scarcity, we, after years of research on ingenious ways of covering our failures, have come up with the ultimate, the one-size fits-all species of the ‘scapegoat’: the mobile sim!
Be it the inefficiency of our workforce, the ‘immorality’ in our society, crime on our streets, extortion, kidnapping or the ultimate charge of terrorism, the responsibilities of all those concerned with controlling the situation have so conveniently been dispensed with and deposited on the shoulders of this itsy-bitsy rectangular, lifeless thing. We are reminded by our newspapers in the morning, our talk shows on TV and the propaganda machine driven by our babus through the so-called reports submitted to our lordships and to our squeaky clean ‘representatives’ that the sim is the ultimate bane of our existence.
The Nobel Prize for this discovery of the ultimate scapegoat must go to our good old ex-interior minister, who, after failing to convince us with his girlfriends-as-root cause-of-terror theory, shifted to the mobile sim-as-basis-of-all-evil stance. Following his example, our very efficient law enforcers have also conveniently passed the buck to the mobile sims.
Never once have the Pakistani people been told about the logic behind this tirade against sims or any evidence linking any and all of the ills of society to the cell phone. Never has any argument worthy of the true judicial process taken place to support the ever-tightening noose around the neck of our communication platforms. Not even a single survey or research report has been carried out to this effect. In the middle of all this scapegoating chaos, we are occasionally told that an investment bonanza in the form of 3G licencing is going to happen in the motherland. Global investment groups are categorically on record saying that no strategic investment in the resource intensive networks can be considered with this spate of continuous bad news showing nothing but hostility to the fresh injection of capital. Our good old spokesperson for the government is definitely not helping the cause, threatening arrest of the ‘messengers’. Who will commit to financing projects in our country when our revered parliamentary committees indict, prosecute and condemn the telecom industry? The Pakistani nation needs to be given sound reasons and logical answers before our government continues on this regressive course.
Aleena Lodhi
Published in The Express Tribune, December 4th, 2013.
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