On almost every television channel in the country, there are banner advertisements sponsored by the governments of Punjab and Sindh highlighting their public service achievements and future projects worth billions of rupees. The advertisements portray great developments in roads, electricity, potable water provision, irrigation, health, education and agriculture. If one was to buy the yarns being so audaciously spread, all should be milk and honey in Sindh and Punjab. Clearly this is not so. Shehnila was a little schoolgirl, aged seven or so, who would walk a few kilometers in searing heat and biting cold to her school and back daily through fields and uneven footpaths from her humble home in a small village in Sindh. One fateful day she was intercepted by the hunting hounds of the local wadera (feudal landlord) and run down by them to her death. This was two years ago. A great deal of indignation, hot air and self-righteousness were blown around but virtually nothing materialised. Chief among that list was what the Chief Minister (CM) of Sindh promised. One is not sure if any criminal charges for manslaughter were brought against the aristocratic owner of the dogs but it is unlikely given the present arrangement of political patronage in Sindh. Our systems of governance, law and justice long ago lost the will and ability to reach out to poor victims in need and now mostly slither around in toothless ineptitude if and when roused. Our society has abandoned its responsibility towards upholding the rights of its less privileged members under the relentless coercion of the elites. Immeasurable losses of public faith in our courts, law enforcement and governance are pushing the poorer sections of our population to a variety of local overlords for swift justice or then to deliver street justice themselves. Both developments could destroy our already reeling society completely. What happened to a youngster in Sialkot a few years ago where he was clubbed to death by a mob and then hung upside down on suspicion of wrongdoing is a case in point. So is the recent barbaric murder of a poor Christian couple that was burnt alive in a brick kiln in Kot Radha Kishan on manufactured charges of blasphemy. Only the other day a police inspector killed a detainee at a police station because the victim allegedly committed blasphemy. Failed states like Somalia, Mali, Niger, Chad, Libya, Syria and Iraq are objective examples of just such a situation where the judiciary was destroyed first, followed by law enforcement and then basic governance. The Thar Desert in Sindh suffers from the eternal curses of drought, hunger and famine should the rains fail. This has been the case since the River Saraswati was reduced to legend. Drought has repeatedly devastated the whole of Tharparkar with a vengeance for at least the last four years. Close to 400 children, 500 men and over 12,000 animals are reported to have died of malnutrition in Tharparkar district this year alone. None of the 110 medical dispensaries in the district is reported to be functional nor were the Rs 50 million for cattle vaccinations and 232 veterinary dispensaries announced in 2012 visible anywhere. During the British Raj, if the rains failed in Thar by mid-August, the region was declared ‘calamity-hit’, which meant no taxes and free food, fodder and medical aid for the people. For the CM to say that the deaths in Thar are not due to hunger but poverty is ironic imbecility if not complete senility. Millions of tons of wheat meant as relief for the impoverished Tharis never reached them. Large sums allocated for their uplift went to line the pockets of dishonest bureaucrats and politicians. Can anyone with his heart in the right place think of eating a sumptuous feast amidst the hunger-stricken and pathetically undernourished Tharis like that laid out for the Prime Minister during his visit to Thar and for the CM’s rare tour of Mitthi? There is a horrible disconnect between the common man mired in his insurmountable woes and those who rule over them with their hands deep in the public treasury. Common men in the streets, servant’s quarters and kitchens are disposable and incinerated alive if they so much as demand their rightful wages. The mentally and morally deficient scions of powerful political families are being foisted upon the people while prized appointments perpetuate the dynastic grip of the elite over the handles of political power. The indefensible incompatibility of our political culture lends itself to more ridicule when a fresh college graduate is installed as the party head of a major national party. Absurdities like these are reducing our country to a banana republic. The CM’s own constituency of Khairpur suffers from three maladies causing untold hardships to his bonded supporters (bonded because despite his dismal public service record and contempt towards the powerless, they still elect him mechanically to the Sindh Assembly). There is a derelict water filtration plant that was built in 1994 to provide potable water to Khairpur. It is incomplete till today and is cluttered with sewage, dead animals and rotting vegetation. People are forced to draw water from the same contaminated plant and as a result hepatitis has become a common scourge. Just last month 20 people died of Hepatitis C in that city. In Qaim’s village of Din Kalhoro, 50 people are reported to have died of hepatitis. Four mothers are reported to have tossed their children into the filthy city canal and then plunged to their deaths after them just because they could not feed them. There is regretfully no relief in sight for the unfortunate citizens of the CM’s home constituency. When the vertical distance between the leader and the led is so great, their horizons differ by thousands of miles and they live in two altogether different realities. In the elite reality, the Shehnilas can perish as they are of no consequence when alive and nobody will miss them once they are gone. As a rule nobody feels sorry for these worthless specks who are victims of poverty and disease as they do not matter in the prevalent scheme of power. They have not mattered since the charioteer rode in and conquered them. The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan army and can be reached at clay.potter@hotmail.com