Buying our kids future cheap

Government and opposition do want to rid this country of polio; that is not in any doubt. Do they want it bad enough?

Numbers have no sanctity anymore. As we approach the umpteenth ‘final round’ of the Container Run, figures of billions and trillions are and will be thrown around wildly. According to Mr Imran Khan, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Hyde Park property is worth Rs800 million. Mr Pervaiz Rashid, Mr Khan owns four palaces of his own. The government will continue responding with figures of its own, fuel costs for private jets, property taxes, etc., etc. All of this started off as being mildly entertaining, now it is just dumb charades.

There is an alternative set of numbers in the ‘other’ Pakistan away from the prime time chat shows. Rs500 is the amount that the government promises to pay the lady health workers administering polio vaccination. Rs250 is the amount that the government actually pays. Thirty-nine is the number of polio vaccinators murdered in the line of duty. Around 262 is the number of reported polio cases in Pakistan in the year 2014. Eighty per cent is Pakistan’s share in the number of all reported cases in the world this year. Around 300,000 is the number of children in Pakistan who missed polio vaccination in the last two years. Pakistan now faces the very real risk of being soon the last place on earth which will suffer the shame of hosting polio.

Polio does not get anywhere near as much attention in the public discourse as Shaikh Rasheed’s inanities. Polio is not glitzy; it is just crippling. Polio also does not make for a good rhetorical cock and bull show since how does one take a pro-polio position? Unbelievable, is it not? Yet, to take the anti-polio vaccination position in Pakistan is to do precisely that; take a position for crippling our children. Everybody condemns attacks on polio workers (well, almost everyone). However, how does Mian Nawaz Sharif and Mian Shahbaz Sharif condemn the murder of polio workers in earnest and without embarrassment when their governments pays Rs250 to the lady health workers putting their lives in clear and present danger? Prime Minister, this is too low a cost at which you seek to buy the future of our children. How does Mr Khan explain the ‘rage’ of ‘our estranged brothers’, ‘our people’ who have chosen to cripple our children and murder anyone who wants otherwise? One does not doubt the sincerity of Mian sahibaan and Mr Khan, however, one cannot forcefully oppose particular actions while tacitly accepting or make excuses for the larger mindset providing the impetus.



The basement level of our politics ensured that everything is reduced to polemical hysterics. There are those who seek to explain away (read: make craven excuses) for the attacks on polio workers solely as a function of drone strikes and Dr Shakil Afridi. The opposition to drone strikes is legal and the argument can and should be very compellingly made without reference to ‘justifiable’ blowback, etc. Similarly, it was plain silly and dangerous to use Dr Shakil Afridi and fake a vaccination campaign. However, none of this explains the cold-blooded, distilled violence that is inflicted upon polio workers and by logical extension that is sought to be inflicted upon our children. The opposition to polio vaccination is rooted in something deeper. It is a crystallised mix of a literalist interpretation of religion, a twisted version of nationalism and xenophobia. The polio vaccination is ‘Western’ medicine and hence checks all the relevant boxes. The year 2014 has the highest recorded number of polio cases since 1999; well before 9/11 and drone attacks. We are familiar with this brand of opposition to modernity. Yet, the recent intellectualised version of it is in many ways far more insidious. The ‘new anti-imperialists’ or whatever tag they prefer for themselves, often try and make up for their lack of physical touch with the country by attempting to ‘indigenise’ everything, even murder of lady health workers and the future of our kids. The Taliban are ‘anti-imperialist’ to them and everything that they perpetrate can be explained by semi-literate notions of ‘native resistance’ and other assorted nonsense. One cannot be sure, however, by some of their definitions, are the brave polio workers, ‘native informants’? Simply because of one Dr Shakil Afridi. This is not just idiocy, this is dangerous apologia. Principled objections to US foreign policy can and should be made in abundance without tying them in to the future of our country.

Polio is not a question of ideology. In most of the world, it is no longer a question at all. It is simply a matter of priority. The government and the opposition do want to rid this country of polio; that is not in any doubt. Do they want it bad enough, is. The federal and provincial governments can start by not only providing better security to the polio workers but also by substantially increasing their remuneration. If for nothing else, then simply for saying thank you. The next time, Mr Khan is on that container, maybe he can address the parents who are refusing to have their children vaccinated. The responsibility also lies with the Sindh and Balochistan governments. The initially much-lauded missing chief minister of Balochistan has a heavy onus on him after the recent attacks in Quetta.

All of this is obvious, and it is agonising to repeat it. Yet, it has to be repeated, since new cases are being reported (which is bureaucratic language for stating that every day more of our children are facing a lifetime of disability). Some of the most courageous people that I have known have suffered from polio and other preventable disabilities; yet as the cliche now goes no one should be required to be this brave.

Prime Minster, whatever you are doing on polio is not good enough. The government’s Rs250 or Rs500 is a cruel joke. Motorways and Metro Buses can wait. Mr Khan, there is ample time and opportunity to do politics on repeat mode.

Those killed in the latest attack in Quetta were volunteers and three out of the four were women. Their names are Hamida Khawaja Khail, Sania Bangulzai and Hameeda Bangulzai. This is the stuff heroes are made of, and in comparison renders all the hysteric and counter-hysterics on and off the container simply pointless.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 30^th, 2014.

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