Forgotten Families on the Margins of Pakistan

Asem Mustafa Awan

Islamabad: A donkey pulls a cart piled with rags, utensils, and the tired faces of a family that owns nothing else. Perched on this fragile wooden platform is an entire household parents, children, and their meagre possessions—creaking forward under the merciless August sun.

This is not transport. It is testimony. A moving portrait of abandonment that exposes the hollowness of slogans about progress and prosperity. The family on this cart may move along the road, but socially and economically, they remain stuck where they were born on the margins, invisible to policy, absent from planning, discarded by the state.

Elsewhere, donkey carts belong to history books. Here, they are still lifelines. For countless gypsy families, these wooden wheels are house, storage, livelihood and burden all at once. Each tattered bundle tied to the frame is a scrap of survival. Each child clinging barefoot to the side is an indictment of how little has changed.

Read More: https://thepenpk.com/subaat-emaan-becomes-a-global-voice-for-womens-mental-health/

The shame is not that poverty exists. The shame is that it is normalized. This picture does not shock because the scene is repeated daily families stacked on donkey carts, women scavenging at dumps, children begging at signals. What should have been unacceptable has become ordinary.

This family is not asking for charity. Their plea is for dignity: education for their children, healthcare for their sick, shelter for their weary. Yet every promise made to the poor collapses under the weight of indifference. Governments come and go, but families like these remain condemned to the same road, same cart, same fate.

The cart of shame keeps rolling—not because the poor have chosen it, but because the nation has abandoned them. Until the state invests in its most vulnerable, images like this will not be passing glimpses of poverty. They will remain permanent portraits of failure.

The article is the writer’s opinion, it may or may not adhere to the organization’s editorial policy.

Asem Mustafa Awan has extensive reporting experience with leading national and international media organizations. He has also contributed to reference books such as the Alpine Journal and the American Alpine Journal, among other international publications.