Daily Times

The past, one is constantly reminded, is another country. As such, these memories would be as remote to the present generation as tales of extinct animals are to present-day schoolchildren. Summer squalls heralding the start of the mango season, the striped hud hud pecking at the hard wood of the jacaranda, the screech of the wild crimson breasted parrot and the soft iridescence of the jugnu caught in a muslin dupatta are images lost to a generation that has never known anything like that age of innocence.

Sadly, this generation’s ‘plenty’ is violence, insult, offence, marginalisation, deprivation and a steady erosion of the human spirit in periodic avalanches more deadly than those that bury soldiers on remote mountain tops. This is a generation asphyxiating under the monumental debris of lost dreams, drowned by tsunamis raised through graft and corruption, shell shocked and traumatised by bombs that do not differentiate between friend or foe and buried alive under the weight of lies. Yes, this generation has it all, but it offers a vastly different platter from the ‘plenty’ that my generation grew up with.

Today, divided along socioeconomic fault lines, one group lurches from high tech to porn, from couture brand to the latest Ferrari, from uninterrupted power supply to imported water, from marina party to drug induced haze, from liposuction to hair extensions. The other group, though a mirror image of the former is a shocking, ghostly mockery of its own fatted, feted sartorial self. Encased within a cocoon of grime, hunger, disease, injustice and desperation, the image stares back hollow-eyed with every trace of the patina of life buffed away from its sun scorched skin, destined never to morph into a miraculous butterfly.

The grim statistics speak for themselves. According to the Bread for the World Institute, over 1.2 million people worldwide live well below the international poverty line, earning less than one dollar per day while 852 million people go hungry worldwide. Of this number, more than sixteen thousand children per day, close to six million a year, die from hunger and hunger-related illness. Similarly, in Pakistan, while one group luxuriates in plenty only to perpetuate its own hedonism, the children of the other are born to die without ever having lived at all.

For us, mirror image or real, there cannot, must not ever be a free lunch. As Pakistanis, we must return to that state of grace in which men eat only the fruit of their own labour. Utopian? Certainly. The Greeks called it thymos, we call it self-esteem. For us to allow self-respect to grow, among individuals and as a nation, our answer to a hand out, whether local or foreign, must be a firm ‘no’. The dissenter, the lone voice will always find enemies but therein lies the challenge. That we live in dangerous times is now a fact. In ancient times, rulers who had fallen into disfavour would have been crushed underfoot by their favourite elephants. The world is no different today. Except that the monarch has been replaced by that juggernaut called government and the elephant with the great wheels of industry. The corporate sector will rise to its defence with a ready response of how it labours relentlessly to provide jobs for an enormous number of people, fulfilling its social obligations through schemes for its workers, et al. While one cannot disagree with the argument, one must also consider the irreversible damage that globalisation and industrialisation have contributed towards in terms of the people left out of the loop of plenty. For a poetic description of the devastation caused by agricultural industrialisation, one need only to refer to Hardy’s classic Tess, which details the farmland’s transformation through the intervention of the machine. The farm worker made redundant, the milkmaids and hand butter churners displaced by mechanised dairy farming, the countryside throbbing to the sound of harvesters and tractors.

In a way, this could have been written about the crisis facing the Pakistani hinterland. With more and more manual labour being replaced by machines and the failure of government to control population, create new jobs, develop a skilled workforce, plan for alternate energy generation or provide clean drinking water, the mirror is becoming increasingly fogged, distorting both images beyond recognition. While the urban image becomes more effete by the day as it disconnects with the rest of the country, the rural image remains quagmired in a medieval construct long due for an overhaul. There are of course, moments that lift the spirit. The greening of the Lahore airport, with its superbly planned approach, the world class intersections built to direct the motorist to various parts of the city are a joy to behold. Unfortunately, as aniseed lost in a camel’s mouth; these urban transformations cannot replace the essential need for potable water or hygienic solid waste disposal.

The cardinal rule for any government is to pursue a strategy for sustainable development. Teaching a man to fish is wiser than merely giving a man a fish. After he has devoured the first one, what must he do? Wait for the next fish to be doled out? Far, far better to help develop his skills so he can find fish for himself. Far better for new strategies to be thought out, new perimeters defined and possibly new players inducted. The good news is that as a third generation of Bhuttos is readying for public office, a second generation of Sharifs is also testing the waters. Bilawal Bhutto, Hamza and Maryam Sharif are the emerging political heirs on the block. While having played a mixed innings themselves, it is incumbent upon the old guard to instill the tenets of good governance in the fledglings. Only time will tell how well the youngsters have learned their lessons but one cardinal rule they must live by is to work towards sustainable development and eliminate policies which are short term, self-serving and cater to select groups only.

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The writer is Academic Advisor Lahore Grammar School and can be reached at navidshahzad@hotmail.com