Bruises of terrorism, fault lines of a dysfunctional system, sea of external debts, custom-made political chaos, and vultures of internal and regional conflicts have left a flawless trail of my utter destruction. I have lived all of my life in a time of great menace in the experience of both tragedy and comedy.
I am numb with confusion and horror at how the corridors of power are inspired by errors, exaggerations and lies to mislead the entire nation. We should be under no illusion the political will to fix what is broken is fully evaporated.
I often struggle to breathe but resist thinking of the lost faith in the judicial system, incompetent politicians, and military dictators who worked hard to wheel me off into the intensive care unit (ICU) by placing my future on a ventilator. Now, my life support is a drip feed of foreign loans and emergency cash injections from lenders and friends. Have I told you my name? My name is Pakistan. I have endured multiple military coups, which further annihilated my organs. But the ugly truth is freedom of expression, human rights and democratic values were suppressed altogether to test my courage, patience, and resilience. This reminds me of Hamlet by Shakespeare, “When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.” I am not shockproof but too exhausted to react.
You almost certainly know stag inflation, a spike in armed burglaries, millions of job losses, a foreign-exchange crisis, ineffective foreign policy, and a poor justice system are symptoms that I am facing life-threatening challenges.
I hear my neighbours whispering about my systematic collapse, which has emanated from bad governance, corruption, ideological wars, and the absence of the rule of law.
Surviving from the dark and divisive period of more than a half-century, I have failed at large to give people their fundamental right to education, freedom, and security. I have the world’s second-highest number of out-of-school children (OOSC) with an estimated 22.8 million children aged 5-16 not attending school. But no one should have to tolerate unalleviated agony that prevents the right to education.
In addition, the sheer scale of discrimination faced by vulnerable religious minorities has struck me profoundly. I feel a deep sense of injustice that Minority protection and Anti forced conversion bills are flushed down the loo by the lawmakers. This has exposed the outrageously undemocratic underworld which continues to sow distrust in parliamentary democracy to restore the charm and calm.
But it isn’t over yet. When it comes to women’s rights, I am still a long way from equality. Admittedly, the violence against women, including forced conversion, kidnapping, rape, and murder, is causing irreparable damage to my character and faith. Today, 12 women are raped each day, one woman every two hours. Why is women’s suffering so ignored?
Watching these wounds being inflicted is painful. It is blindly obvious no one bothered to invest in quality education, health provision, alternative energy or even a framework for population control. To my mind, this dilemma echoes enduring commitments and promises of leaders to move heaven and earth for the public. But in practice, families, workers, and job seekers are being swept under the carpet. Unfortunately, politicians are refusing to chase the glitches they are just chasing headlines.
Today, I am rapidly moving from being classified as water-stressed to water-scarce as annual water accessibility falls below 1,000 cubic metres per person. Environmentalists have been talking about disappearing rivers for many years now. I hear my neighbours whispering about my systematic collapse, which has emanated from bad governance, corruption, ideological wars, and the absence of the rule of law. The growing body of evidence suggests that I am a country with such divided and dodgy centres of power, it is sometimes tricky to determine who holds the greatest sway to run me and who makes the decisions which ultimately matter to me and my people.
The routine diminishing of the pain of the financial crisis has a long history of flimsy promises and bad policy choices that made me so poor to shoulder the financial worries of my nation. Perhaps, the system has made me a renewed heaven for religious extremism, ethnic conflicts, rotten cultures, and an open playfield for hybrid regimes. Brick by brick, the dream that once rose to shine on the global stage is shrinking before the nation’s very eyes. It has been my lifelong dream to play a front-seat role to empower every single individual to give social, economic, and civil rights. Nevertheless, I am confident I will not find a greater opportunity to play that role than in working for and alongside you. Countries at war can reach settlements, civil war factions can proclaim truces even militias can be accommodated at the negotiating table. But we can’t find a way to cease hostilities in battles between political parties, and ethnic and faith groups. Lack of unity then provided the perfect excuse to key stakeholders already eager to forget the trauma I have been through. I have struggled to recover from trauma after the trauma but never found solace all these years.
Behind this manufactured political dereliction, time knocked at our doorstep on several occasions to decide whether to enter the progressive world or to remain confined in a medievalist belief which serves only the feudal class and their monstrous egos. It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. But how long do I need to wait for someone, who is manifestly suited to understand every journey needs a first step? I know happiness is a hard thing to quantify, but that doesn’t stop me from trying! In fact, with the annual World Happiness ranking of 121 out of 146, the country perhaps best qualified to offer lessons on how to cope with sorrow and trauma is me.
Enough contemplation of the government’s misdeeds: today, I thought to break my silence about how rogue prime ministers, incompetent cabinet ministers, corrupt bureaucrats, dishonest judges, and unkind military dictators bring me to an era of total breakdown. This wilful obliteration has born a left-out generation of unemployed people, underprivileged farmers, persecuted minorities and disheartened low-income families with scars which will never heal. I feel constantly vulnerable from the timidity that has invaded my life. Now, I’m in my late 70s. I’m not the only one going through tough times, but when I close my front door, I am alone!
The writer is based in UK, and has specialization in health informatics from Johns Hopkins University.