When experts come to our rescue

I was once told that I was not a journalist but a writer. The implication was that while journalists earn their living exclusively from their salary, writers contribute articles as a hobby, travel a great deal, practise their bridge, write books and probably play golf on weekends. The trouble, however, with both journalists and writers on our patch of turf is that whenever we take up a subject like why the country is up the spout, we always appear to state the obvious; and I will be the first to admit that I have also been guilty of this. We produce learned tomes about what is wrong with our country, fortifying our indictments with statistics provided by experts. The problem is, everybody knows what is wrong with our country. It’s just that, as Eleanor Bron in Yes Minister pointed out, nobody is doing anything about it. We offer lots and lots of solutions. The problem is… nothing happens… nobody is interested. The Quartet that is in charge is here to stay. The freeloaders in Islamabad, even those who don’t have fake degrees, don’t read the newspapers. And because nobody reads, nobody does anything to improve matters. This is nothing new. It has been going on since the Dakota carrying Mr Jinnah landed at Karachi airport and salaries were paid in Indian currency.



The English have always been a little suspicious of experts and intellectuals, especially those who wear glasses, get high on Bach Fugues and believe everything can be explained through statistics. Since we parachuted plumb into the lap of Uncle Sam early in the days of Ayub Khan’s decade of development, we developed our own small tribe of experts who introduced us to the fascinating world of statistics. We learned that production of wheat per acre in Holland was three and a half times higher than it was in our country. A week later, I read that an expert had been sent to teach us how to improve the cultivation of rice.

In Pakistan, experts idling with laptops and calculators come up with vital statistics. Like the one about Shahid Afridi’s batting performance in the 2014 20Twenty World Cup when the all-rounder fared 82.4 per cent better during the first six minutes that he was at the crease compared to the next two minutes when he was either stumped, run out or caught at the boundary. An allowance must be made for those occasions when, fired by missionary zeal, he believes that every ball has to be sent into orbit or perhaps, back to Sialkot where they produce them. In the match against the calypso Kings, while the coach was about to fly the PCB flag at half-mast, the commercials came to the rescue. We discovered that a chap who informed his spouse that he wanted to take a second wife became the victim of an Aston Villa penalty kick and took the 45-degree aerial route to the ground in 2.3 seconds flat. While viewers were recovering from the sudden onslaught on male chauvinism and wondered what the display of aggression had to do with cell phones, they learned to their astonishment that a local company had now finally developed a hundred per cent certified halal soap! At present, this product might be controlling only 1.08 per cent of the soap market in Lyari and 0.8 per cent in Baldia, but there is every indication that by the time Afridi hits his next six, we might have a halal shampoo and a halal toothpaste. After all, we live in the land of the pure!

Published in The Express Tribune, April 6^th, 2014.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.