Fixing institutions


Bilal Iqbal May 27, 2010

Every day in Pakistan, hundreds, if not thousands, of protests are staged. Most of them hope some reporter will find something unique in their daily drivel of a woe-story. And most of these stories never make it to public memory. We are living in a society where protests must fight each other for the few spots available to them. Lo and behold, another group of discontented citizens threatened to stage a protest at two pm tomorrow. But will the reporter show up? Our poor reporter has to decide between this and another protest at the same time where people will pour kerosene on themselves. Which one do you think the reporter will cover?

And at the end of the day when the kerosene protest has to compete with another protest, where people actually got critically injured, for the last spot on the page, which one do you think will make the final cut? And the very next day when a reader decides to have a discussion with her slightly more uninformed friends, choosing between the protest where three people got badly injured and this other protest where one teenager actually died, which one do you think she will pick?

And a week later, after the media has made a lot of hype about the incident, which case do you think the Supreme Court will take suo moto note of? It is a cruel world out there. The strongest stories survive and the weak ones are ignored – their problems, no less genuine, are forgotten.

It is about time that every issue is not left for the media to pick up and publicise. The various institutions that are there in this country to address public grievances and to tend to their complaints need to get their acts together. The media by itself cannot be expected to fix all that is wrong. And neither can the Supreme Court. What needs to happen is for the institutions to stand up and do their job.

Published in the Express Tribune, May 28th, 2010.

COMMENTS (3)

Bubloo | 13 years ago | Reply Nice, read O-cap :))
Hassan | 13 years ago | Reply Totally agree with you there Bilal. Its not basically the responsibility of the courts or the media to be vigilantes. In fact, a sustainable system does not require vigilantes. The institutions have to play their role and be to service to people; show them that they are the go to places instead of showing up on television and asking the CJ to take action! If I get all that from the institutions that run on my tax money, I would love to give VAT and feel proud. however the situation seems so damn hopeless that I dont see a single spark lighting it all up; perhaps a fuel bomb might do that, revolutionary measures needed.
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