The reported deaths of more than 60 children across Pakistan’s Tharparkar district just in the past fortnight appears to be just not enough to jolt the region’s political establishment into an emergency response mode. Well known as one of Pakistan’s poorest areas in the southern province of Sindh, the calamity caused by famine, such as the conditions in Tharparkar, is indeed not new. The pictures of malnourished children and adults from poverty stricken homes which are now making the rounds have been seen before as well in recent years.
Perhaps the ruling class in Sindh, led by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) of former president Asif Ali Zardari, is much too busy elsewhere, first and foremost seeking to end a widely popular army campaign against blatant lawlessness in the southern city of Karachi, the provincial capital. In recent months, the PPP was clearly stung by the arrest of Asim Hussain, widely known as one of Zardari’s closest confidantes and a crony. Since then, the party’s mission almost full time appears to be essentially that of forcing the army to return to its barracks so that Hussain can win his freedom from charges ranging from corruption to treatment of hardened criminals at his private hospital in Karachi.
The Tharparkar episode has however badly exposed another dark side of the ruling establishment’s character. That some of Sindh’s ruling politicians took it upon themselves to shove the issue of famine-related deaths of children under the proverbial carpet, by assigning responsibility to carelessness of their mothers, is nothing short of outright callousness.
On Friday came another controversial chapter in the recent saga of rapidly worsening lawlessness in Sindh, when the provincial legislature saw a PPP-led move to back a controversial new law, which allows the provincial government to withdraw cases against anyone on trial in the province. Opponents of the move once again saw the measure as a desperate measure to facilitate freedom for controversial individuals under trial in the province including Hussain. Going forward, the new legislation could only deepen the uncertainty in the province. Either the move will be subjected to legal challenges going up to the highest court of the land or quickly become a tool for the PPP government in Sindh to win freedom for individuals of its choice.
Either way, the future will only compound the prevailing loss of credibility for Pakistan’s politicians.
The two episodes — response to the famine stricken population of Tharparkar and Friday’s developments in the Sindh legislature, speak volumes over Pakistan’s emerging outlook. The country once celebrated its return to democracy when the last military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, stepped down just seven years ago. And yet, the aspirations of many Pakistanis have clearly led to absolute disappointment as Pakistan’s ruling class stumbles from making one controversial choice after another.
Across the country, the gap between the rulers and the ruled is clearly evident in many segments of society. Anecdotal evidence over the way the already inefficient public services are being run in to the ground, only throws up a familiar story of neglect after neglect in key areas like education, health care and institutions meant to help the poor earn a living. Indeed, this neglect has become clearly embedded in Pakistan’s political culture to the point that no segment of the country appears to be immune from its effects.
Beyond Sindh and in Islamabad, the seat of Pakistan’s federal government, the story of the government remaining detached from the daily lives of common citizens remains just unending. In just over two years since prime minister Nawaz Sharif returned to power in the landmark elections of 2013, when he became the first ever politician to head a government for the third time, Pakistanis have suffered unending misery. On Friday too as the provincial legislature debated the new controversial move, many parts of central Pakistan were thrown in darkness for several hours following a widespread breakdown of the electricity supply system.
The power failure has been a recurring and regular feature of daily life across Pakistan in the past few years. In spite of many experts clearly suggesting that fixing electricity shortages must be a top priority for Pakistan, the country’s ruling politicians and those too armed with generators at their homes to beat the effect of recurring power shortages, remain visibly half complacent. Generally, the ruling class in Islamabad appears determined to oversee a vast network of fancy road projects as the top priority for the nation’s development.
The ideas seems to be that of creating islands of prosperity in Pakistan which will emulate some of the world’s more advanced countries, notwithstanding the cycle of impoverishment which will continue to surround a large segment of the country’s population.
To add to the proposed fancy road networks, Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister’s younger brother and chief minister of the populous Punjab province, is determined to oversee the completion of a fancy new train project in the city of Lahore-the provincial capital. For the Sharif family, adding the train network will be a novel new project for their home city which is also the key base for their political power. Some political pundits predict a phase of coming instability led by protests from an increasingly miserable public, while others insist that the Pakistani public will remain complacent in the absence of a viable political alternative to the present day ruling structure.
Irrespective of the direction of future political events, one key aspect of Pakistan’s coming outlook remains clear — the bulk of Pakistanis will become increasingly miserable if their country continues on its present-day path.
