Over five months after mother nature decided enough had been enough and opened all seacocks, rehabilitation still remains a distant dream for millions of flood victims. Expressing alarm at an unbelievably large number of families awaiting compensation, a fact-finding mission by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan noted how life stood far from usual in northern Sindh, where dilapidated houses and hampered education failed to attract the attention of the authorities. It was only this month that PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari had implored the government to pay regard to the miseries of the badly-impacted province while carving out reforms needed to bring the IMF back to the discussion table. And while his efforts to push the developed world to open its eyes and take a peek at the consequences of its industrial ambitions have earned him considerable praise time and again, one cannot be naive enough to overlook the whiff of affairs right underneath his nose. It is very sagacious of him to fight the case of his people in an era where no incidence–however heart-wrenching–manages to survive a couple of news cycles, but the responsibility of building back their lives and livelihoods primarily falls on the government led by his party. The scale of destruction unravelled before our eyes in an extraordinarily testing monsoon season last year might be well beyond the capacity and capability of this fatigued state yet it cannot afford the luxury of putting on blinkers and overlooking the hopeless eyes and empty stomachs of at least two million pushed below the poverty line through no fault of their own. Then again, handing out a few meals and sprinkling some holy water does not amount to the fulfilment of our obligations towards them. These people wish to be resettled in their houses; their fields paved anew; their children sitting in schools, and their lives back on track. Only success stories hold the magical charisma of drawing in more humanitarian aid from the international community. Any further delay in the translation of the lofty pledges would very understandably be taken as yet another manifestation of the infamous greed of a few stepping into the way of a government that is a genuine well-wisher of its citizens. *