The new aristocracy

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In the times of menacing inflation, our elected representatives - chosen by us to bring soothing wafts of respite from haunting high prices of commodities and suffocating utility bills - have increased their salaries disproportionately given the poor financial plight of their masses. The plague our country is afflicted with is Theban, as the rulers who vow to rid the country of its plague are themselves the plague.

Shockingly, Rs1 million monthly salary was demanded by parliamentarians as they were drawing just "peanuts" - Rs180,000 per month. The proposal was turned down by the National Assembly's Finance Committee and Rs519,000 was sanctioned in the "best national interest". Add perks: subsidised housing, utilities, vehicles and security - costing taxpayers billions annually. In contrast, 40% of Pakistanis live below the poverty line (World Bank, 2023), surviving on less than $2 a day.

The leaders' frolicking in financial gaiety, courtesy to the public taxes, serves nothing but to spite the poor masses who always have too much month at the end of their income. All talks about the government's austerity measures remain an absurd charade.

The gigabyte increase in the salaries of the parliamentarians approximates to 300 per cent and the beneficiaries justify it by comparing it with the salaries of federal secretaries brushing aside the fact that the major spadework of governance is done by the bureaucracy. The legislatures defend the raise, again wrongly, claiming their salary was much lower than that of provincial ministers.

Hazrat Abu Bakar (RA), after becoming the first caliph of Islam, agreed to take a stipend equal to the wages of a labourer. He was told that the stipend wouldn't be enough to bear the expenses of his family. He said that the wages of a labourer must be enhanced then.

During his address one day, the second caliph of Islam Hazrat Umar (RA) was interrupted by Hazrat Salman Farsi (RA) saying the audience would not listen to and follow the caliph as he was donning a dress made out of two pieces of cloth from the treasury against the allotted one piece per capita. He could easily justify himself as one piece wasn't enough to cover his comparatively taller body. But he explained that he took the second piece from his son. Then, the audience agreed to obey the caliph.

The unity between the treasury and the opposition mostly absent on many important matters of national interest was garnered on the said pay raise without any demur. After the prime minister's hasty approval, parliamentarians received their revised salaries for the month of January. Apna kaam banta, bhaar mein jaey janta, hums a Bollywood song.

The demand and its prompt acceptance remind us of George Orwell's Animal Farm. After taking control of the animal farm, the ruling pigs entitle themselves to perks and privileges more than other animals and justify it: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." Equality being an absolute phenomenon is turned into a relative one. Moreover, the rhetorical shift from 'all' to 'some' exerts the entitlement of the "privileged some". To turn absolute phenomena into the relative ones is merely the facetious polemics for safeguarding one's vested interest.

Saddam Hussein, the Assistant Chief (Policy) at the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, writes in one of his articles that the annual working days of National Assembly, based on the last five years, average 88 days and that of Senate, 57 days. An MNA costs the national exchequer about Rs0.7 million per day and a senator around Rs1.1 million per day. The absenteeism on any given day in both houses stands at 37 per cent. If students show such absenteeism at their educational institutions, they are labelled as flippant.

The 'Macro Poverty Outlook for Pakistan 2024', released by the World Bank, says limited growth in real wages and employment will keep the poverty rate near 40 per cent through fiscal year 2026. A country where the gap between the minimum wage (32,000 rupees) and the living wage (at least 70,000 rupees) is widening, such pay raises sound apathetic and aristocratic. That minimum wage, too, isn't complied with in public and private enterprises.