The loss of reason

What is it about our part of the world that makes people lose all sense of reason and the capacity to think for themselves? Mediocrity in leadership has been cited as a possible cause for this malaise. But it is the people who have elected these leaders under systems that passed for democracy; and it is the people who are responsible for the emergence of dictators like Ziaul Haq, who in tandem with the United States, was in large measure responsible for the current state of insecurity the country finds itself in. Ever since I can remember there has been a constant disregard for issues that really matter, which are the life blood of a civilised society; issues like the creation of water reservoirs through dams and man-made lakes, systems for the production of electricity and the kind of security that existed during the dictatorship of Ayub Khan. It is this apathy that has militated against any kind of progress. Instead of concentrating on one issue at a time and prosecuting it till the end — like the Iran pipeline project — we get diverted to non-issues, expending the nation’s resources and energy and achieve nothing. A case in point is the current trial of former president Pervez Musharraf, which seems to be going on forever.



We have no shortage of rabble rousers who at the drop of a hat call for protests and strikes, knowing jolly well that nothing is going to be done to rectify a problem or to improve a situation. Some causes are frivolous. Others are deadly serious. Take for example the strike called by the Jamaat-e-Islami on September 20, 2012. Tempers flared and there was a great deal of rancour and bitterness. On January 24 this year, the Ulema Action Committee ordered a massive strike over the law and order situation in the country. And the Majlis Wahdatul Muslimeen asserted its demand for a military operation against terrorists. It didn’t solve anything. The army was unmoved. What it did achieve, however, as other protests, strikes and demonstrations have achieved, was to deprive daily wage earners like street vendors and contract labourers of their livelihood. Some bright spark in the ministry of finance pointed out that the Jamaat protest caused a loss of Rs12.5 billion to the exchequer. Does anybody really care?


There doesn’t appear to be any feeling of guilt or remorse from the prime minister who these days is being wheeled out as a patrician do-gooder. Nor was there a squeak from the hangers-on who surround him; not even that awful clenched cliche of intensely whispered anger that American senators occasionally display in meetings with Third World delegates. The man handling the country’s finances, who comes across as a constant and uncompromising campaigner credited with manoeuvering the fall in the price of the dollar, has taken up a great and righteous undertaking to bring back the $220 billion illegally stashed away in Swiss banks by Pakistani tax dodgers. If he can destroy the code of secrecy of the Swiss banking system, he should be working in Langley, Virgina. Nothing much can be done about the sense of lethargy in the workplace where there’s an infinite reluctance to get a job done satisfactorily and in a specified time. Nor can anything be done about a whole raft of issues that keep taking us back to the thirteenth century. Head of the list is the infinite reluctance to administer polio drops to children and adults in certain areas of the country because of the injunction of one man. Who would have thought the World Health Organisation would come to the rescue?

Published in The Express Tribune, May 18^th, 2014.