Selfie with a gun

PML-N is unwilling to admit their blunder, face the bitter truth that they care more for concrete structure than lives

The PPP leadership is buried in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, but the party itself will eventually be buried in Thar. As the people of Thar dig little graves for their infants every day, they may have even run out of curses for those who rule them as a birthright. The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) continues to ravage Thar by its criminal neglect, its habitual inefficiency and its cruel abandonment of the fundamentals of governance. If there were an award for the worst-ever elected government on the planet, the PPP in Sindh would be an admirably strong contender.

But wait. What about the Allied Hospital in Faisalabad? The largest hospital in the third largest city of Pakistan, and the second largest city of Punjab, has one of the highest child mortality rates in the country. But this is central, urban Punjab, you may say. This is the most developed region of Pakistan, run by the self-proclaimed most efficient government in the country. And yet, little babies are dying in this hospital at an alarming rate. Why?

Well, two reasons jump up immediately. One, the facilities at the children’s ward are woefully inadequate for the number of patients that pour in from the city and its surrounding areas. Two, of the facilities available, equipment is out of order, or lying in stores unused, and doctors are ill-trained to deal with babies.

What? In Faisalabad? This is hardcore PML-N territory. And under the watch of the dynamic chief minister — who’s been the chief minister since dinosaurs roamed the earth — more than 2,000 kids have died this year alone. This fact hits you like a punch in the gut. Why are incubators for the infants not in working order? Why are there not enough of them? Why is the children’s ward short of beds to cater to the number of patients? Why are there not hospitals in smaller cities so people do not have to bring their kids to Faisalabad? Ah, well here’s where the plot thickens.



Or doesn’t. Ask the PML-N leaders and their reaction is two-fold: a) Total denial of reality and rejection of all allegations; b) lack of funds. As it turns out, both are — to put it mildly — sickening.

Their denial is typical of the mentality they sport like their big moustaches and bigger egos. They are simply unwilling to admit their blunders and face up to the bitter truth that they care more for concrete structures than for human lives. They then have the gall to say they do not have enough money to build hospitals to save lives! Not enough money? Billions and billions spent on bridges, flyovers, underpasses and overheads, but no money to save the lives of little babies?

No sirs, it’s not the money you do not have, it’s your sense of priority that is missing. And this warped priority is what is wrecking the future of our country: rulers investing in bricks and mortar instead of flesh and bones. The little babies who writhed in pain and died in the arms of their grief-stricken parents in that hospital in Faisalabad, died so that the PML-N government in Punjab could build shiny Metro buses and glitzy flyovers. Try suppressing the stench of this reality with the imagined fragrance of the Punjab government’s development model.

And the infants in Thar are breathing their last because the corrupt and incompetent PPP government has even sold its conscience to the highest bidder. The tragedy unfolding in Thar is beyond comprehension. And every time one thinks the PPP cannot plunge to greater depths, it does. How else would anyone explain the horrifying and shameful fact that the wheat bags sent by the Sindh government for the starving people of Sindh turned out to be full of dirt.

The deaths of little babies in Thar and Faisalabad are a reflection of a very morbid reality that we face: we have ballotted our future into the hands of a very ordinary set of people. Since 1947, we have been living through a series of crises, but it’s only much later that we realise the sheer magnitude of the disaster that we endured. It is only now when we look back do we realise how the musical chairs of the 1950s and the selfish politics by landed pygmies led to the rule of the generals. Those who lived through the times perhaps did not have a full idea of the train wreck they were experiencing. Similarly, it was much later that the nation realised how the civil and military leadership had conspired to trigger the shameful events of 1971 and the loss of half the country. History teaches us much.

But clearly not enough. We are now passing through a similar crisis where the damage done by rulers will make itself evident in the coming years and decades. These rulers have cloaked themselves in democratic legitimacy, but the ruin they are bringing upon this bruised and battered nation is unimaginable. People say give democracy a chance and let the system evolve. Sure, tell that to the parents who buried their little babies. Tell them it’s okay because their kids died for the glory of democracy; that the little ones suffered pain and death on those filthy beds in rat-infested hospitals so that the PPP and the PML-N could enjoy the fruits of democracy in their luxury four-wheelers and palatial offices.

What is happening in Thar is not negligence — it’s a crime. Ditto for Faisalabad. But do you see the Sindh and Punjab governments going into crisis mode? Do you see Bilawal Zardari and Shahbaz Sharif camping in Thar and Faisalabad and fixing the broken system they lord over? Do you see any sign, any movement, any gesture that would suggest that these governments and those who run them have any concern for the little babies who are dying because they are not being given the treatment they require?

If the answer is a no — which it most certainly is — then know this: we are being forced to take a selfie with a gun. And this kind of selfie does not end well.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 9^th, 2014.

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