Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur
The state and the government here have become so obsessed with the re-election of the president, the 'deal' with Benazir, Nawaz Sharif's return plus deportation and the adverse developments for it on the judicial, economic and political fronts that they have abdicated their responsibility to governance as a whole, which never was anything to write home about in the first place.
There is so much wrong with every aspect of governance here that it would require volumes to enumerate them, but the most disturbing factor is that nothing is being done to remedy the pervasive rot. The entire system seems to be preoccupied with the developments on the political and judicial scene and has gone into what one may call the 'stand-by mode', where it is not dead, yet not alive either.
Governance was and is in shambles and disarray with breaches of security and a spate of suicide bombings, and the perpetrators seem to be holding the initiative. The sense of insecurity is omnipresent and debilitating and is taking its toll on all fronts, especially the economic one.
Crime continues to rise and rise, but it has not peaked yet. The car and mobile snatching epidemic in Karachi does not seem to wane with supplemental dacoities and kidnappings becoming a daily occurrence, targeted killings being the latest craze it seems. Indications are that all this is actively patronised by those who are also running the administration. There is a near-total breakdown of law and order, with no redress for the mounting grievances.
The local governments, which were touted as harbingers of a new dawn in the science of governance and the panacea for all evils, have in fact become a major problem for the people and the hotbed of corruption and incompetence. There is inbuilt corruption in this system, as all public works are awarded to cronies and favourites after the share of the Nazims is deducted at the source. Compounding this corruption is the haphazardness and shoddiness of the so-called developmental work. Large cities like Karachi and Hyderabad are in shambles, smaller towns and villages are either entirely overlooked or get the shoddiest work.
The irrigation department is the most cherished place for a posting because there is unbridled and brazen corruption on plea of water shortages and watercourse lining programmes. The Left Bank Outfall Drain and the Right Bank Outfall Drain (LBOD and RBOD) made billions for some, but destroyed more land than they were supposed to save and have irreversibly polluted fresh water sources like Manchar Lake.
The irrigation system is not only a source of corruption, but now rates as the single major source of disease and pollution in Sindh and Punjab because no government, past or present, civilian or military, has initiated any schemes for treatment of sewerage or the massive industrial pollution. The underground water resources too have been polluted and poisoned.
Little wonder that 40 percent of the country's population is affected by hepatitis B or C. It is a lethal bomb that is ticking away and eroding the health of every single person residing in Pakistan. The drinking water, the food grains, the vegetables, the fruits, the meat, the dairy products that we all consume are to some degree tainted with industrial or domestic waste. The problem has required urgent attention since long, but the governments here, preoccupied mostly with their survival and enriching their cronies, hardly find time for solving such 'petty and minor' problems.
The provision of clean drinking water is the sacred duty of governments everywhere, but here it does not even make it to the least important category. Some areas in Hyderabad, including the one I live in, are provided with sewerage mixed water that alternates with clean water supply and people have to keep checking when clean water arrives. That the pipelines are contaminated is not something that concerns the authorities. There is no complaint centre for such grievances.
The oft-repeated promises of the prime minister for universal provision of clean drinking water have been conveniently forgotten and added to the already long list of broken promises. How can they be bothered when the family of a federal minister from Sindh uses water from a specially installed filter plant in their house for bathing, etc.? For drinking, the elite, however, uses mineral water.
The education system is in shambles in spite of the much advertised 'Parha Likha' programmes. There are 247,000 state-owned schools in the country where 33 million children are taught by 1.5 million teachers. About 40 percent of the children drop out before finishing primary school. The figures do not give the real story because not only are there ghost schools, but non-functional schools too. I personally know that of the three schools built on land provided by a zamindar in Shahdadpur district, only one school is operational in spite of repeated requests for teachers.
Recently Ms Anisa Zeb Tahirkheli revealed that "as many as 70,000 schools in the country are without the basic facilities of water, electricity, lavatories and boundary walls." If only the money spent on specious and misleading advertisements were spent on schools, there would be radical improvement. Shockingly, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) spends Rs180 million on its foreign trips alone.
Private schools have proliferated and are minting money because the state has abdicated its primary responsibility of providing education to its citizens.
About the health system here, the less said the better. There is an absolute inadequacy of health facilities in the entire country and whatever facilities are available present a horrifying picture. Let me tell you about Hyderabad. A private medical college-cum-hospital here, which charges students exorbitant fees, dumps the hospital waste by the roadside. It had enough money to buy land worth millions for residences, but not for an incinerator.
Recently my nephew's infant daughter's ear swelled due to her earring late at night. She was taken to a well-established and old charitable hospital. Asked about the standard of their hygiene and sterilisation, one of them honestly said that 'instruments are sterilised only once in the mornings'.
At the Civil Hospital they advised general anaesthesia for the operation and then said they did not have an instrument to cut the earring. The ENT Department where the child was taken had patients lying on the floor packed like sardines. The child spent the night in agony. The earring was easily removed by a GP the next morning.
Those who spend millions from government coffers on treatment for themselves and their families can hardly be expected to know the common man's fate. The government's top echelons and their families should be sent to the government-run hospitals, like the one in Hyderabad, to understand the sufferings of the people.
The countrywide land mafia is gobbling away land and soon there may be no beaches. The land grabbing is officially sanctioned as on September 9th, when the CDGK passed a resolution okaying commercial use of beach land.
The DHAs are one of the most blatant forms of land grabbing by the armed forces. Tauqir Zia had transferred prime property belonging to the Karachi National Stadium to senior army officers: a residential plot of 500 square metres was sold to the army officers for Rs 0.6 million, which could then be sold at the market price of Rs 15 million. The Cadet College at Petaro coerced the Mallah community near that institution to give their land to it.
In 2001 the Sindh Cabinet leased land spread over 11,640 acres to DHA in Dehs Abdar and Khadeji, for the development of DHA Phase IX. The same provincial cabinet had decided to provide the land at the rate of Rs 100,000 per acre. The total cost of land is Rs 1,164,062,500. This land will soon be priced at thousands of rupees per square yard. Windfall profits nourish and nurture not only corruption, but also incompetence.
The problems with every department and sector here and the woes and worries that the people have to face are submerged in the 'everything is fine, Sir' syndrome created by the bureaucrats and the politicians who benefit and thrive on people's miseries.
While it is understandable that the elitist governments whose overriding concern is survival and enriching themselves relegate all other things to inconsequential position, what is really worrisome is the obsession of the media with politics at a great cost to social, cultural and economic issues.
The electronic media is singularly concerned with politics and talk shows. The print media, too, is guilty of it and I, too, plead guilty. Politics undoubtedly should have its share, but we have a responsibility towards the people to highlight issues that profoundly affect them.
The media should not abdicate its responsibility towards the people, as the state and government has. A careless and casual media is as bad as, or even worse than, a spineless media and we should all make efforts to pinpoint and highlight the problems that the people face.
My advice to the media and to myself regarding dealing with politics is, in the words of Faiz Sahib: "Aur bhi dukh hain zamanay mein mohabbat ke siwa
Rahatain aur bhi hain wasal ki rahat ke siwa."
The writer has been associated with the Baloch national struggle |
