Daily Times

Meetings, meetings and more meetings!

To date, Islamabad appears comfortable in dragging its feet, pushing the proverbial can further down the dusty road and hoping that some divine miracle will solve the devastating wheat crisis that has shaken the nation to its core.

The response has been nothing short of a mockery of the plight of millions of subsistence farmers who have nowhere to turn, a mountain of debt (as a result of which, they continue to be exploited by the middlemen). Isn’t this downright tragic that an inquiry committee report demanded by a sitting prime minister named and shamed four low-key officials of the Ministry of National Food Security over poor planning and negligence?

The investigations should have centred around the real beneficiaries of a misguided government policy to import in a bumper crop year. Why wasn’t more attention given to the nexus of those in key positions, without whose green signal, an overwhelming wheat import running into billions of rupees could never materialise? Despite numerous warnings and red flags, the caretaker government had turned a blind eye to the looming crisis.

No qualms about that. No denying that. But isn’t the present elected government setting itself up for a similar future as it tries to placate the protestors with promises and proceeds with a rather done-to-death routine of operation cleanup? Kissan Ittehad is not asking the authorities to move the heavens.

All these exasperated farmers want is a chance to clear their stocks with enough in their hands to till their lands for the next season. Yet, as the blame game prolongs and the media frenzy moves on to another raging tempest, there’s little that can undo the damage.

The most that can be offered to the real and only victims in this saga is closure and whatever procurement relief the government can squeeze out of its budget. *