Not My Problem

Op-Ed by Masood Hasan

In Pakistan the operating principle is it's everybody else's problem. This absolves all individuals of any responsibility and paves the way for all and sundry to behave irresponsibly at the best of times and break every existing law, intact or already broken. Thus all problems go on magnifying till they become so huge that any solution cannot even be conceived leave alone implemented.

So the mess just gets bigger. Since no one is ever responsible, no one can be challenged. When the proverbial S hits the proverbial C, the axe falls with monotonous regularity on the little guys who take the rap and melt away into the shadows. The big alligators, shed tears, make disapproving noises, mouth a few well-thumbed clichés and move on pretty much without sustaining any hit. This may be a bit simplistic but it's pretty close to what characterises our national behaviour. This can also explain why we are buffeted by one crisis after another.

One month we are gleefully exporting wheat, the next there is a huge shortfall in the country. Riots break out, people raid flour shops, police raid the people, fights erupt all across the land, much abuse on a national scale is witnessed and through it all, the government does its 'lever' bit -- contorting the truth, shifting the blame and accusing those who are not at fault. The great dream-wizard, the king of dubious numbers meantime is lolling about in Davos or his luxury home in London, but he is not to blame. In this century, Pakistanis are learning to live by candlelight whose prices have shot up four fold. Those with lanterns are worse off because there is no kerosene. As for power it is more off than one and generator prices, for those who can afford them, have shot through the ceiling.

There are no times for power cuts. They happen as and when. Gas shortages are rampant and a ludicrous campaign runs on and on, blithely informing suffering consumers that it is not at all load shedding, but load sharing!! Dear God, are our sins so serious? It was WAPDA which inflicted this rubbish on us years ago and now, like a bad ghost, the gas boys have taken it up. Consumers are further asked to move their thermostats from 'hot' to 'warm.' How many geysers has anyone seen with those red caps on and gauges that work? Most just run like gas fires. That's not enough. People are advised that gas heaters are dangerous and must not be used. It is far better to wear warm clothes. In summer I guess we'll be advised to wear no clothes. This in the year of our Lord 2008!

The government led by Mr Aziz (anyone remember him?) threw open the country to all kinds of imports. Shops were flooded with hundreds of economically priced air conditioners and as far as the additional power was required to run these, that was not Mr Aziz's problem. He created conditions for thousands of easy-pay cars to flood the market but didn't think twice what this would do to the country's oil imports, the dwindling financial condition of the people or the roads of this country. Banks had a ball but power simply got sucked out. Mobile phones were placed under 'industry' and their numbers used to claim progress, yet he has sailed away into the sunset and even has the gall to take his benefactor out to a Lebanese meal in London rather than treat him at his home.

In our culture, a guest who cannot be entertained at home is not an honoured guest but Mr Aziz gets away once again and in fact complains that his buddies of yesterday, the Chaudhrys of Gujrat Sharif are maligning him and his policies. The president even calls the Gujrat boys and tells them to chill it. So as the buck passes from hand to hand, things just get worse but since no one is bothered to address what really ails the country, nothing is going to change. High profile prisoners saunter away cool as cucumbers from hordes of policemen 'guarding' them, but other than a few lowlies no one is going to have to answer for it. When he is questioned in London, the president flies into a temper and suggests that whipping errant journalists may be quite the appropriate thing to do. And so it goes on.

They say that no one can really solve our problems -- they are just too gigantic in size and scale. There is nothing that can seemingly fix any of the critical issues that now hold us in a vice. Can anyone do anything about it? Ask any Pakistani and all you get is a firm shake of the head. The problems are just insurmountable and because they have been ignored so many years, now have assumed alarming proportions. Almost every Pakistani at an individual level believes that an individual action will make absolutely no difference to anything. This thinking -- or lack of it, makes serious issues even worse.

Consider this. For a country where 40 percent of the people have no access to drinking water, the way we all waste water washing our cars is a matter of great depression. House after house in any part of what passes for urban Pakistan witnesses thousands of gallons of water being poured on cars and drives. Perfectly good drinking water but we simply waste it without a second thought. None of us ever admonish our servants or drivers not to wash the cars daily. We all know perfectly well that an hour later the car will be dusty again and the sparkling shining black tyres will sooner than later fall into a gutter or a dirty puddle but the cars must be washed, summer or winter. I don't know any other country where washing cars is such a fetish.

And it's not cars alone. Rickshaws, motorcycles, vans, trucks, buses even bicycles are washed, washed and washed. Hundreds of service stations use high pressure hoses to clean the under carriage of vehicles as if one was going to eat off them. It is a criminal waste of a precious and dwindling resource and we are depleting our water reserves as if there is no tomorrow. Does anyone care? Has anyone even begun to think of this? Like power and now gas, soon it will be too late but neither is anyone answerable and nor is anyone going to make it his life mission to prevent this.

We are eating into what is God given but it will not last. The earth's resources are not infinite and people who are unaware of the damage they are doing to the environment are simply bringing doomsday closer. We may not be able to hold elections without rigging them, but is conservation of water, power and gas to name three, possible? We are not a people who believe in saving, which probably explains our lowest rate of savings in the world, but unless some extraordinary steps are taken, we'll be history before we know it. Some strong, no-nonsense measures need to be taken and defaulters punished but even while saying this, a niggling thought tells me that we will simply lurch on from crisis to crisis, never knowing our left foot from our right. Perhaps that is our final destiny.

The writer is a Lahore-based columnist.

Source: The News International