Best and worst in man

The coronavirus pandemic is bringing to the fore both the best and the worst in human nature. A report in this newspaper says crime rate has registered a drastic fall in Rawalpindi since the lockdown has been put in place. Reports from other cities too show an identical trend. Unfortunately, media reports also say there has not been much decline in profiteering, overcharging and corruption. This is borne out by the increase in the prices of essential commodities like wheat flour, cooking oil and sugar. Prices of sanitisers, masks and other things needed to protect from the coronavirus too have gone up. Several cases of hoarding of these items have been reported in various cities and towns. Trucks carrying food rations have also been looted. Favouritism and corruption in the distribution of food rations are also being witnessed. At some places people have been seen collecting food rations much more than their rightful share, and later selling them to retailers at much reduced rates. This is resulting in depriving many of the deserving.

Linking the cash handout to the possession of CNIC does not seem to have taken the ground realities into account. Always, there is a considerable number of people without the CNIC because of the low literacy rate and general lack of awareness. This mostly emerges at election times when it is found that though many have their names on the voter lists, they don’t possess the CNIC — an essential requirement to exercise the right to vote. Then political parties hurriedly come to the rescue of voters and get their CNICs prepared with a view to bagging their votes. Even now many who went to collect the cash handout have returned disappointed after their biometric test did not confirm the ‘genuineness’ of their CNICs. A spectre of mass hunger is haunting the country. The inferno in the belly is a very bad thing.


 

Published in The Express Tribune, April 13^th, 2020.