Daily Times

There was a heart-wrenching story of mass suicides by Indian Punjabi farmers (7,000 until now) under the burden of unpaid debt of state and private lenders, in an Indian magazine (The Week, August 2014) some time ago. Besides the vast scale of human tragedy and stupendous official apathy, what was most striking was the fact that a major canal that irrigates those unfortunate lands has also become the instrument of suicides and bloated dead bodies are collected by the bereaved families at a sluice gate called Khanauri Sluice. Khanauri is a small hamlet on the Punjab Haryana border. One can imagine the agonising anticipation with which relatives must await the arrivals of their drowned men. Human misery and corresponding criminality of those responsible know no borders. It is happening in India and it has just begun for a different reason in Pakistan. Our sluice is different and far more gruesome.

We are perhaps a country directly under God’s own care to have survived when everybody else is busy dismantling it. One can do with an occasional bite at the ankle, a push here and a shove there, but a premeditated and relentless assault upon the very being of the country is quite another matter. The resilience of our people is astounding and their capacity to be brutalised incessantly by almost all departments of the state in an unholy connivance with destructive nature like earthquakes, floods, hunger and disease is boundless.

Pakistan might soon have to look forward to a disabled generation of crippled polio-ridden children and has achieved the dubious international distinction of being a polio-intensive state in the company of countries like Afghanistan and Nigeria. The Taliban are not programmed to realise what kind of misery their opposition to vaccination will bring about but one thing is sure: their own children will be the foremost among those crippled by polio, slithering miserably over gravel, dirt and cow dung begging for alms on the city streets. Few realise that after Pakistan has been labelled as polio infected, our remaining tourism is going to vanish, exports will dwindle and travel abroad will become further embarrassing, literally making us the lepers of the global community. This is not paranoia but is a dispassionate assessment of the horrible mess we are in and of a few ugly things to come.

The Congo virus, Ebola, bird flu and hepatitis B are some of the epidemics just waiting in the wings, more because of our fake and ineffective vaccination campaigns and our national madness bordering on criminality to relentlessly pollute our entire river system with untreated city effluents, raw sewage and arsenic-laced chemicals. Our environment officials are quick to raid brick kilns for easy graft but one has still to see them raid large factories spewing poison both in the air and in water sources. They do not raid posh, sprawling housing societies discharging untreated sewage into fresh water streams and natural drainage systems. Even in the federal capital there is hardly a sewage treatment plant. Lye Nullah serves as a master sewer for the twin cities and exemplifies how filthy we like to live beyond our front door. Because of the mindless pollution of our river waters, arsenic and chemicals in our underground water aquifers have risen to dangerous levels. Has anyone ever paused to note why kidney diseases are on the rise and why the incidence of cancer has increased dramatically in our country?

One knows of a hospital that specialises in dialysis procedure related directly to kidney failure. Some 90 percent of the patients are poorer than a church mouse and from highly vulnerable tracts of the country. Unclean drinking water, high levels of chemicals in the underground water and a horrifying scale of food adulteration are some of the reasons for the spread of diseases among the poor and the ignored. Just how is a poor kidney patient, who cannot hope to get two square meals on any given day, expected to manage 15 to 20 lakh rupees for a kidney transplant to live on for a few more years? Which one of them can afford 20 lakh rupees for a bone marrow transplant to fight blood cancer? The result is that most patients report there with the certainty of death in their minds within months if not a year. Some undergo treatment, thankfully free of cost, in the hope of getting a few free meals and relative wellness till the coming week’s repeat dialysis.

There are emotionally devastating appeals and tales of unmitigated miseries that pour into the hospital office daily, each capable of setting off a small bloody revolution of its own. This is virtually mass murder. No wonder people are attracted by Imran Khan’s and Tahirul Qadri’s appeals and a menacing wave of resentment against the existing exploitive social order is building up so swiftly. They seem to have touched the most raw and painful nerves in people’s lives. One is amazed at the hideous pomposity and the epic state of denial of the political leadership, judiciary and the bureaucracy that continue to ridicule, play down and contemptuously dismiss the agitation just because it is led by those whom they tend to dislike or minimise. We are missing the whole point by doing this. Our superciliousness and refusal to face hard facts might cost us very dearly in moral and material terms.

A few philanthropists offering free cancer treatment and dialysis or hosting free food services here and there are not enough. It does not take away the state’s responsibility towards its underprivileged citizens. Initiatives like income support, free laptops and prestigious highways are not an appropriate and fuller response and do not work well when most of the fellow countrymen go without food, shelter, medicine, clean drinking water and a decent job. Stone hard insensitivity, horrid self-deception and a dreadful inability to genuinely empathise with the mounting sufferings of the people can hit us in the face like a runaway locomotive. Do not also expect these indentured serfs to rise to any call for saving abstract notions of democracy, vague ideologies or a bundle of humbug of the like.

People want us to deliver them from poverty, disease, hunger, illiteracy and injustice. They want their children to be healthy, clean, properly fed, school going and safe. We have to give them a solid sense of security of their homes and families, businesses, jobs and a guarantee of justice reaching them by the speediest means possible when needed. They do not want rural mothers committing collective suicide along with their children just because they could not feed them. They do not want gang rapes of their little daughters by the sons of influential men and then see the despicable beasts strut around free, flaunting their power and weapons while the victim immolates herself in the village square. Let us do some serious soul searching before the dam breaks. If it does, one thing is certain: all our riches, power and palaces will not be able to save a single one of us. The last czar of Russia was shot into oblivion along with his family in a nameless forest of Russia with not even a decent burial. He too was a mighty potentate with immense imperial power, luxurious palaces and treasures. He too moved regally with thousands of cavalrymen clearing the route before him shooing away people like pests, lest we forget.

The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan army and can be reached at clay.potter@hotmail.com