Floods: the blessed curse?

For most of its existence, humankind has tried to make sense of, cursed, battled, and at times even invoked natural calamities over which it had little control. This unpredictability and uncontrollability stemmed mainly from the inherent design of nature and human ignorance. The cycle of fear and ignorance continued to take a toll on human lives and livelihoods, manifesting in various forms of devastation: the fury of nature and the vulnerabilities produced by systematic anthropogenic designs.

Millennia of evolution and experience — trial and error, divine injunctions, intuitions, reason, and, more recently, scientific inquiry — have gradually scrutinised natural phenomena and reduced their unpredictability, thereby diminishing the calamitous impacts that haunted humanity for most of its existence on the planet.

Increased predictability has enabled modern societies to allocate resources more effectively toward minimising potential losses, while infusing policy and practice with greater pragmatism and dispelling fears tied to such calamities. Ironically, these lessons are often deliberately overlooked in our part of the world for various purposes. Of all the reasons behind otherwise evitable devastations caused by natural calamities, one paradoxical truth stands out: unlike most parts of the world, where disasters are regarded as cursed challenges, our leadership treats them as opportunities, or blessed curses, as it were. That is to say, for most of the successive regimes, the calamities and the public's plight served their vested interests, as manifested in their thoughtful inaction and inability to effectively combat the implications of devastation.

Today, the gushing floodwaters sweeping away huts, cattle gasping for air underwater, and the destruction of villages and livelihoods have lately been the horrifying reality in K-P, Punjab and parts of Sindh. Though all this makes the empathetic cry their hearts out, it hardly dares teach a lesson in pragmatism, nor does it, as in the past, melt the heartless hearts or stir the dead conscience of the ruling elite, who have encroached on the public's fate, crucial waterways and policymaking since the country's inception. This is mainly because the nexus of elites in Pakistan has selectively approached policy and practice vis-à-vis floods: they preach fallacies to the people in a bid to conceal their epic misgovernance and spectacular failures in mitigating calamities and protecting public lives and livelihoods.

For instance, ministers, bureaucrats, pirs, clergy and other authorities often remind the public that floods, among other calamities, are invoked by the sins of the systematically oppressed people, thereby absolving themselves of responsibility for the nation's suffering. In contrast, when engaging with the developed world, they blame climate change. All this doesn't come out of thin air; it's the result of a carefully crafted design, orchestrated and perpetuated by the architects and abettors of elite capture.

Since most of the ruling elite hail from homelands abroad or plan to live their post-service lives overseas, securing the public rarely makes up their priority. Instead, the plight of the poor serves the rulers' interests in two ways: sustaining elite capture and exploiting the people's misery to enrich themselves. Chaos serves the unelected forces and adds to their space in both policy and practice, feeding the narcissism and publicity stunts of elite. This makes natural calamities not only devastating for people but also, paradoxically, opportunities for the consolidation of elite capture. Therefore, the vox populi is not that the government will help protect them, but rather that it will help drown them.

For the rest of the world, floods are the result of climate change; but for this country's systematically misled people, they are largely portrayed as the wages of the poor's sins. One might exclaim, "Behold!" — the divine cannot be as unjust to its people as Pakistan's judiciary, bureaucracy, media, politicians, clergy and guardians.