Endemic of soul-crushing miseries

Pictorial Editorial

Asem Mustafa Awan: It is not an uncommon sight seeing people stand in long queues to get flour. The staple food of the nation is out of reach for millions who live below the poverty line. The queues are at Java Chowk in Islamabad at the beautiful sector I-9.
The queue is of people who have the money to buy whereas millions in flood-affected areas have no money and no food, having lost everything. No one really knows what really happens there. An urgent attention is needed to find out with evidence. The figures in the past presented to international donors were rejected with reports in the media about the large-scale embezzlement of aid items sent for the flood affectees.This is happening all over the country. In one instance,  a photographer was there to capture the queue of people and a wheelchair-bound person waiting in line for his turn.
There are plethora of policies that are never implemented. Words, intentions and promises remain unfilled. This picture depicts many things: hopelessness, despair and lack of opportunities presided over by the ineptness of leadership. A day in the life of an average person starts with low gas pressure, followed by a liter or a half liter of fuel to go to work. It doesn’t end here because next in line is the obtaining of clean drinking water from the filter plant denied to people for a long time.
All these things start the day for a common person that is at its wit’s end having endured this life for over a decade and more. The government instead of improving the lifestyle of the masses do no more than empty promises. The alternatives such as Solar panels, UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) and generators are there to combat power shortage. The use  of water purifiers for domestic use is promoted for protection against waterborne diseases namely Hepatitis. However, these alternatives are also getting out of the reach for an average person due to the inflationary rise in prices of such items. The day is not too far in the distance when people with no option will be forced to uproot the remaining forest for cooking and staying warm. The policymakers should look again at their policy priorities and implementation as this is not the Pakistan that the great Quaid Muhammad Ali Jinnah strived for. We simply should put everything to the recession. There are many countries that faced recession but sprung back to life and the examples are all around Pakistan.
The case studies of Bangladesh, India, and China are all in the recent past. Bangladesh is a poignant example with a stronger currency and an economy that has progressed in leaps and bounds in the last 50 years since its independence from Pakistan.
These two examples are directly related to Pakistan and a person is left to ask how the change of fortune has come about in these two countries while our ‘land of the pure’ remains In doldrums.
It is a fact that Pakistan is an agriculture-based country but it imports wheat. How this has come to be is the question the nation has been asking for very long. Something is wrong somewhere and what we are seeing and experiencing is just a tip of the iceberg.

The writer is a journalist based in Islamabad and writes on a wide range of issues.

Photo by Chaudhry Imran Shaukat